


where the Double Walker dwells

by InTheArmsofaThief



Series: Ley Lines [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Disabled Stiles, Future Fic, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Parallel Universe, Temporary Character Death, due to universe hopping, lots of side ships, partial character death, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10026380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheArmsofaThief/pseuds/InTheArmsofaThief
Summary: Derek looked like he always did, perfectly groomed and a little gruff.  Though, as Stiles glanced at him, Derek’s face was lax with surprise.“Stiles?” Derek asked, sounding flummoxed.“Dude, I know it’s been a while, but don’t be so surprised I’m hung over in the woods.  It’s practically tradition at this point.”Derek sniffed the air, eyeing him with distrust.  “But, you can’t… I just…” he trailed it off like a question, taking a half step forward before pulling out his phone and dialing a number, eyes never leaving Stiles.





	1. déjà vu

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a direct sequel to "If the ley lines you should follow" but there will be a direct tie in towards the end.

Stiles shot back his fifth Jager Bomb.  It was disgusting, but it did the trick.  He was blissfully (forcefully) forgetting what his childhood home looked like, abandoned and half packed up by the people closer to his dad than Stiles had been.  He was forgetting the stale air on his tongue and the jarring juxtaposition of a pristine white stake on the front yard and its swinging FOR SALE sign. 

He still had to finish the paperwork.  But that was for another day.  Right now, he was drinking.  The flashing lights and loud music overrode his senses, as dulled as they already were from the alcohol, and he could forget his pathetic excuse for a life.

A hot breath tickled the side of his ear.  “Not dancing?”

Stiles turned his head to catch sight of a guy (very attractive, which wasn’t uncommon for The Jungle) squeezing in between the stool Stiles was on and the drag queen next to him.  The guy signaled for the bartender, but the wait could take a while. 

“Is that an offer or just an observation?” Stiles said, picking up his half-finished whiskey sour.  He had one more shot waiting for him, but he needed to chase that taste out first.

The guy smirked.  He had sharp cheekbones.  High.  And there was something almost silver about his hair.  Whether that was dye or the lights, Stiles couldn’t tell.  Didn’t bother trying to.  He looked delicate in a way, but his eyes said that he was sure of himself.  Stiles could do that.

Not fifteen minutes later Stiles found himself in a back alley, pushed up against the brick wall and closing his eyes to the hot press of the guy’s lips against his jaw.

Stiles had a lot of vices.  Sex with strangers was high on that list. 

He was just thinking, he hadn’t even asked the guy’s name, when the guy’s teeth sunk into his skin.  Sharp, sharper than they should be, not the playful kind of bite to be expected by drunken hookups.  That alone was enough to shock him into pushing back with both his hands and the spark that was always resting inside of him, blasting the _thing_ away as quickly as he could.

Stiles was too drunk for this.

He didn’t remember what happened to the guy, or leaving the alley.  The kickback from his magic while drunk washed over him like the ocean and he let it.  He was firmly of the mind that drowning could be peaceful. 

When he woke up, it was with a headache and a dizzying sense of déjà vu.  It wasn’t the first time Stiles had woken up, hungover in the preserve.  He even sort of recognized where he was.  Sort of.

Stiles patted down his pockets for his wallet and phone, just to make sure he wasn’t mugged or, like one memorable New Years, threw them in the lake.  Wallet was fine and dandy, but his phone was fried.  “Aw, fuck,” he muttered.  

The night’s events came back to him in a jumbled mix.  All Stiles wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry, and eat something really fucking greasy.  Of course, just as he was convincing his body to stand the fuck up, he felt that familiar thrum under his skin meaning a wolf was nearby.  One of the pack, he was certain, otherwise it would be more alarming.

Stiles had a brief moment to wonder what that thing was last night that it didn’t set off his spidey-sense.

He rubbed at his shoulder, expecting to find some sort of scab, or at the very least a bruise.  But his skin felt normal.  He wondered if maybe he had just been slipped something.  Stiles didn’t have to think too long before the one, the only, Derek Hale came bounding into the clearing where Stiles stood brushing leaves off his ass.

Derek looked like he always did, perfectly groomed and a little gruff.  Though, as Stiles glanced at him, Derek’s face was lax with surprise.  

“Stiles?” Derek asked, sounding flummoxed.

“Dude, I know it’s been a while, but don’t be so surprised I’m hung over in the woods.  It’s practically tradition at this point.” 

Derek sniffed the air, eyeing him with distrust.  “But, you can’t… I just…” he trailed it off like a question, taking a half step forward before pulling out his phone and dialing a number, eyes never leaving Stiles.

“What, dude?  You’re acting weird.  Please don’t tell me there’s something strange going on because now’s not a good time for me.”

Stiles began to feel the same howl under his skin, another pack member closing in.  He didn’t really want to deal with Scott or any of his dumb betas.  Ever.  Derek was manageable, at least. 

“Hey, Derek!” a familiar female voice called from the distance, but Stiles couldn’t quite place it.  She was getting closer, though.  “What are you – holy fucking shit.”

Stiles turned to the voice.  His heart plummeted and his jaw dropped.  That was Erica.  He couldn’t be mistaken.  Her hair was still that straw blonde with a soft curl to it.   A part of him still remembered how it was draped around her shoulders at her funeral. 

He snapped his head to Derek, who seemed completely nonplussed by her arrival, just waiting for someone to answer his call.

“What the hell?” Stiles asked, his voice getting a little squeaky. 

“Stiles?” Erica questioned, sniffing the air and eying him over.  “You’re…”

She took a step forward, eyes filled with wonder.  Stiles automatically flailed backwards, smacking his hand against a low hanging branch.  “AH!  God damn it.  Stay away from me.”  Stiles turned to Derek, trying to figure out why he wasn’t freaking out.  “Did someone dip into some voodoo shit?  What the fuck?  I am not here for this!”

Derek ignored him, and Erica.  Stiles looked back to her.  They had a stare off, him backing away every time she stepped forward and cursing himself for not having any mountain ash on him.  He should have known better, being in Beacon Hills.

“Hey, where are you?” Derek asked whoever finally answered their phone.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”  There was a beat of silence.  Erica’s eyes had bugged out the moment Derek had started talking.  “Because I’m looking at you right now.”

Stiles turned his head so fast he almost gave himself whiplash.  “What?”  The world spun a bit.  “Jesus fuck, I am too hungover for this bullshit.  Is no one going to address the fact that Erica is standing right there and.” He cut himself off.  Alive.  An adult.  All grown up.  Way past Stiles’s ability to create an image.  Past any creature’s ability to replicate someone else, to also have them grow to an age they never lived.  She was impossible.

And Derek told the person on the phone he was looking at him. 

Stiles looked back to Derek, then to Erica.  Then to Derek, who was still on the phone.  “Who are you talking to?” Stiles asked, afraid of the answer. 

Derek didn’t answer.  He hung up the phone and let out a deep sigh.  “We’re going to bring you back to the house so we can figure out what you are.”

“What _I_ am – ”

“So are you going to come with us nicely or are we going to force you?”

Stiles held his hands up in surrender.  “I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” Stiles admitted.  “But as far as I know, Erica’s dead and I’m hungover and possibly hallucinating, so fine.  Take me to your leader.”

Erica and Derek looked at each other with concern but ultimately flanked Stiles, not getting too close as they walked through the woods.  Derek kept looking him over, his brow knitting together in puppy like confusion.  It was a look he hadn’t seen on the older werewolf in a long time.  One that spoke of being unsure of himself and spooked. 

Derek had been fine, the last time Stiles had seen him.  Confident.  An asshole.  What accounts for domestic bliss between a werewolf and a bounty hunter.  Derek hadn’t been confused and worried about anything since the whole “oops I’m human” incident.  Stiles found himself thinking more about Derek, wondering why he seemed so different than wondering how Erica was apparently still alive.  Derek was just… more open.  Even with Braeden, and how truly good she is for him, Derek never let go of his shell of self-protection.  He grew confident, yes.  He grew happy, and was willing to help out when needed, but he kept himself separate from Scott’s pack and he never showed how vulnerable he might actually be, especially after almost dying at his most vulnerable moment ever. 

It was such a subtle thing, though.  Such a minor difference.  And Stiles hadn’t been home in years, it could have been caused by anything.  But it was a much easier thing to fixate on than the mountain of _nope_ on his other side.

It wasn’t long before they were stumbling into a clearing (well, Stiles was stumbling) and Stiles was caught off guard by the sprawling Victorian styled manor he had a feeling he’d seen somewhere before.  Erica and Derek kept walking towards the house as if they owned the place.  But last Stiles knew, Derek was still living in the loft (fully refurbished, finally) and, well, Erica was living in a coffin six feet under.

Stiles looked back to the house.  The door was a cherry red that pulled old memories from the start of junior year of high school.  It was the color Derek had used to paint over the alpha’s symbol. Stiles shoveled his anxiety into a box in the back of his head as it began to put pieces together.  He followed Derek and Erica up the little ramp that led to the porch, joking to himself that werewolves were always too cool for stairs.   

“This is…” Stiles trailed off.  He followed Derek and Erica into the house, eyes skimming the place for any clue he could find to explain what was happening.  “This is Derek’s house.”

Derek and Erica looked at him oddly.  “Uh, yeah,” Erica said, gesturing him to the sofa.  “The others will be here soon, so just sit tight.”  Erica looked to Derek.  “Should we feed him?” she sounded so genuinely confused by the situation.  Stiles’s stomach growled and he hoped that was answer enough.

Derek sighed.  “You want pop tarts or leftover mac and cheese?”

“How is there ever such a thing as _leftover_ mac and cheese?  I’ll eat that.”

Derek raised his eyebrows and looked to Erica.  “He sure sounds like Stiles.”

“Yeah, but,” a new voice joined them.  One that sounded familiar but distorted somehow.  “We all know that _I’m_ Stiles.” 

Stiles spun around, heart going a mile a minute.  The distorted sound came from hearing his own voice, the way it never sounds the same on a recording.  Coming from down the hallway was another him, a bit less boney, less bags under his eyes, and less ability to walk.  Other him was in a wheelchair.

“What the fuck?” Stiles whispered.

“So, you don’t think it’s a shape shifter?” Other Stiles asked Derek. 

Derek shook his head.  “Shape shifters usually try to convince you that it’s really that person.  He would have been pretending that he can’t walk.  Also, he seems very confused by everything.”

“I am very confused by everything!” Stiles shouted before catching sight of a group photo proudly displayed on the wall leading up the stairs.  Of the pack.

Of Isaac.  Of Erica.  Of Boyd.  Of Derek.  Smiling on the beach, clearly all out of high school.

Stiles’s breath caught.  He was expecting to return to Beacon Hills.  Drink away his problems as he signed off his dad’s house and the only thing begging his return.  He was expecting to avoid Scott’s pack and try his best not to get tangled into any new mess and beat it right out of there.

He wasn’t expecting an entirely different Beacon Hills.

“Stiles, calm down,” Derek was saying.  Saying to him.  A large hand settled on his chest and Stiles faintly heard Derek telling him to breath with him. 

Stiles pushed it away reflexively.  People didn’t touch Stiles when he was having a panic attack.  It wasn’t a smart move.  Derek tried to pull him close, keeping up a soothing voice, a steady tempo to his words.  His arm was too strong, holding Stiles in place even as he thrashed his arms.  Magic built itself under his skin.  Stiles thought he tried to warn them, but he was too caught up in the tight pull of his lungs and the way his head felt disconnected, too light and ready to run away from him.

Derek yelped and dropped Stiles, who then sank to the floor, catching his breath.  He looked up at a stunned Derek and wolfed out Erica.  “I’m sorry,” he croaked.  “I didn’t mean,” he took a deep breath and blinked and blinked.  God damn it.  He was crying. 

“Well that’s definitely new,” other Stiles said, eyes wide and mouth pulled tight.  “Maybe I should pull out the mountain ash?”

Stiles shook his head.  “I’m human.  You don’t do that?”  Other him only stared.

Erica snarled.  “Why should we listen to you?”

Stiles tried to think about it from their perspective.  He knew that he was real.  That he was him.  They didn’t.  He had no proof until they looked him over.  “Did you call Deaton yet?” Stiles asked.  The old vet was a cryptic asshole, but he was reliable in these types of situations.  Plus, Stiles could pick his brain, too.  Win-win.

“As soon as I hung up with Derek,” other him said, wheeling around the room. 

This wouldn’t be a djinn’s doing.  He hadn’t wished for anything.  And even if he had, everyone should be acting like he was normal.  There also wouldn’t be a him in a wheel chair. 

He could be in a coma.  Or hallucinating.  There’s no accounting for what kind of shit the brain can make up.  But, he looked back over to Erica.  She was too real.  His brain couldn’t have imagined her.  Not like this. 

His stomach growled again.  Stiles clutched at his head.  “Aw, fuck, I am so hungover.”

Erica dropped the growl act and rolled her eyes.  “Come on, hot stuff.  Let’s get you some food.” Erica managed to make the simple task of microwaving mac and cheese into a Mexican stand off.  Her eyes never left him and her glare rivaled even the surliest Hale. 

She dropped the hot tupperware in front of him and handed him a fork.  Derek and other Stiles were discussing shit in whispers on the other side of the room. 

“So, Other Stiles,” Erica started as he took his first bite.

“Aw man,” Stiles groaned, mouth half full, “Don’t call me Other Stiles.  That’s what I’ve been calling him!”  He waved his hand towards the Stiles in the wheelchair.

She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.  “He’s the one we know,” she pointed out.

Stiles chewed his food and tipped his fork.  “Fair.”  He thought for a moment, spearing another clump of noodles.  “But throwing my name around too much is confusing.  Like, my brain already hurts and it’s been like what?  Two minutes?”

“So what should we call you?” Erica asked, seemingly amused despite herself.

Stiles looked over to the other him.  He thought about going by his first name for a hot second before remembering how much he hated that no one could pronounce it, not even himself.  Then he thought about how he used to mispronounce his first name and how fucking cliché that fake name would sound.  Stiles sighed.  “I guess we can use my middle name.”

Other him perked his head up and looked over.  “And what’s your middle name?” he prompted.

Stiles rolled his eyes.  Middle names were useful for identification because they weren’t on a lot of official documents.  Not that there weren’t a million ways an imposter could find that information, especially in the world of the supernatural.  Lydia would probably know your entire family tree just by shaking your hand and could tell you in detail the first death you experienced.  (It was a fun party trick.  Most people’s first deaths were pets.)

“I’ll go by Nik,” Stiles said.

“Your middle name is Nicholas?” Erica scoffed, giving wheelchair Stiles a look of disbelief.  “And you went by _Stiles_.”

“It’s not Nicholas,” Stiles said.  “N-I-K.  Short for Nikodem.  Also Polish and weird.”

The him in the wheelchair frowned and crossed his arms.

“You still could have gone by Nik in school,” Erica said, rolling her eyes.

“I was little,” the other him said.  “Stiles stuck.  Never bothered to change it once I got older.”

Stiles groaned around another bite of cheesy noodles.  “Does this mean I’m going to have to start thinking of myself as Nik and you as Stiles?  Like, I feel as if this would be less confusing if we were normal people with the same name.  Like Dylan.  Or Tyler.”

Other Stiles rolled his eyes.  “I think you having the same face as me negates that.”

The front door swung open and Stiles snapped his head up, cheeks full of mac and cheese, to see Malia.  She was a familiar face he had been hoping to avoid.

“Oh, wow.  Shit,” Malia said, looking between the two Stiles. 

Then a slightly panicked and fully grown Allison entered.  Stiles dropped his fork.  It clattered against the floor.  He swallowed the food in his mouth too fast and it felt as if a rock had nestled itself in his throat.  He heard himself say her name, but soon his ears were ringing with the pounding of his heart and the world was spinning because he wasn’t breathing.

There was a moment of clarity when Stiles thought he was going to faint, and then he was on his knees, arms hooked under his pits, carefully not holding him down or too close.  His own distorted voice was telling someone to give him an inhaler.  The trick worked, even knowing about it.  He breathed in the asthma medication and could breathe clearly again. 

From the floor and the support of Derek Hale’s arms, Stiles stared up at himself, Allison, Erica, and Malia. 

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself.  “I think I’m going to throw up.”

He was quickly escorted to the bathroom where he hurled the now wasted leftovers and whatever remains of last night’s drinking had been sloshing around in his stomach.  He felt briefly better.  “Come on,” Derek said softly, “I’ll get you a toothbrush.”

Ten minutes later, Stiles rejoined the others in the living room, now containing Isaac and Boyd.  Stiles ran a hand through his hair. 

“He looks strung out,” Malia murmured, cocking her head sideways.  “He doesn’t smell like drugs, though.”

Stiles stared at his double, who was in a wheel chair.  “What the fuck happened to you?” he croaked out.

“Car crash,” he said, scratching his chin.  “What the fuck happened to you?”

Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to remember last nights events.  “I don’t know,” Stiles said.  “Think something bit me.  I was pretty drunk.”  He looked at the faces staring at him.  “Definitely knocked myself into a different dimension.”  His time alone in the bathroom gave him the step back from the situation that he needed.  Or rather, he kept touching the mirror like he was high on shrooms and tried not to cry because werewolves had super hearing.

The pack stared at Stiles in tense silence. 

“Has anyone called Deaton yet?” Allison whispered, unable to raise her voice louder. 

Stiles didn’t blame her.  The only thing that kept him going was the sheer notion that his life was weird enough and this might as well happen.  It’s not like it mattered.  This place was real, yeah, but it wasn’t his reality.  It didn’t matter. 

“He should be here soon,” other Stiles reassured everyone. 

Stiles stared at the other him in the wheelchair.  A car crash, Stiles thought to himself.  “How long?” he asked, thinking of all his own car crashes.  Near misses, he supposed. 

“About a year and a half ago,” Stiles said. 

A year and a half ago Stiles was choking his way through the special Classics program at UCLA, letting the burn of old magic tear his mind away from the memory of his father’s death.

A year and a half ago he was alone.  No father, no friends, no home.  Stiles looked around the pack that had settled into the living room.  This Stiles didn’t have working legs, but he had support.  That much was clear. 

Stiles settled into a seat and tried to ignore the weird looks he was getting.  He was sure they wanted to ask questions, but were waiting for Deaton.  Stiles had a million questions flowing through his brain.  Was this universe just a random jumble of events or was there a lynch pin that all their differences diverged from?  Why here?  If this universe existed, how many more were there?  Was there a reason?  Is this everyone?  How are Erica and Boyd and Allison still alive? 

The only one he voiced, however, was “Where’s Scott?”

The Stiles from this universe, who had been in the process of rolling to the kitchen, stopped in his tracks and jerked his head up.  “What?” he whispered.

Stiles frowned.  There was something seriously wrong between these timelines.  “Scott McCall?”

“He’s.”  Other him blinked a few times.  “I’m going to be in the library.” 

Stiles watched on as he rolled back and turned and wheeled down the hall.

“Is that your game?” Erica snapped.  “Come here, confuse us, bring up shit like that?”

Allison shook her head.  “I can’t think of any creature off the top of my head.”

“I’m not a fucking creature,” Stiles snapped.

“Then what the hell was that electricity earlier?” Erica growled, stalking closer. 

Stiles looked around for Derek, but he had disappeared. 

“It’s my fucking magic.  Your Stiles has it too otherwise he wouldn’t have been talking about using mountain ash on me.  Only a spark can harness that shit raw.”  People without a spark could use the ash if the space had been jerry-rigged for it.  Like, Melissa had a jar that if she threw to the ground would shatter and the ash would cling to the doorframes and windows, but that was only because Deaton essentially magnetized it to those places.  Only a spark could make a circle out of plain old ash and have it work.

“Stiles can’t do that crap.”

“Well did Stiles study it for three years?” he prompted, crossing his arms. “We’re clearly not the same fucking person, Erica.  But we’re also the same fucking person.”

“What the hell does that even mean!” she snapped.

Boyd got up and opened the front door.  Deaton stepped through a few seconds later.  The so called vet stood just inside the doorway and took in the sight of Stiles standing in the living room.

“Hey, Deats.  What’s happening?” Stiles grinned ruefully. 

“I don’t know,” Deaton said in that smooth tone of his before stepping forward and putting his kit on the coffee table.  “I’m assuming our Stiles is nearby?”

“In the den with Derek,” Isaac offered up, watching intently as Deaton pulled out a few objects and stones and powders. 

“Can someone get him?  I’m going to run a few tests on this one,” Deaton said, eyeing Stiles who could only shrug his acceptance to the situation, “but I may need to check some things between the two of them.”

Isaac jumped over the back of the couch and headed down the hall.  Stiles watched him go until Deaton needed to shine a light in Stiles’s eyes.  The vet looked Stiles over in detail: eyes, moles, fingernails, teeth.  Deaton went back to his bag and pulled out some powders and solutions. 

“What is that?” Other Stiles asked, rolling into the room just as Deaton rubbed a green salve on Stiles’s forearm.

“Fennel and holly,” Stiles and Deaton said at the same time.  Deaton looked at Stiles strangely, which was saying something for the man. 

“What?” Stiles snapped. 

Deaton stayed quiet as he continued his tests, but looking around it was obvious that the pack didn’t know what any of the ointments and powders were.  Isaac tried to sniff out the ingredients but batted Malia’s hands away from picking up any of Deaton’s things.  Erica had a perpetual frown across her brow, constantly opening her mouth to speak only for the words to die on her lips. 

The Stiles in the wheelchair had crossed his arms and pursed his lips in a way Stiles recognized.  He was upset he didn’t know the things the new him did.  Stiles didn’t know how their timelines differed yet, but this other Stiles definitely didn’t have the training he went through.

Deaton finally beckoned the other Stiles over. 

“The Anamfuil?” Stiles asked, rolling up his sleeve.  Deaton looked him up and down thoughtfully. 

“Where did you study?”

“Just finished the Classics program at UCLA,” Stiles said holding his hand out.

Deaton pulled out the ceremonial knife from his bag and handed it over.

“You’re giving it a knife?” Allison asked, eyes narrowing. 

Deaton shrugged.  “This is only one last test to confirm what I’m fairly certain of.  He won’t harm anyone.  Stiles?” he said, addressing the man in the wheelchair.  “Your arm please.”

Stiles watched as the other him rolled up his sleeve and held it out.  He transferred the knife into his left hand and then reached over, grabbing the other Stiles’s forearm, who instinctively grabbed his in return.  “This won’t hurt,” he told his other self,” before dragging the sharp knife in a straight line across their two arms.  It didn’t even break the skin, but a trail of blood welled up regardless.  Proof.  With that knife, you can only bleed yourself. And it bled both Stiles.  He let go and stepped back, handing the knife back over to Deaton.  “Good enough?”

Deaton nodded.  “You crossed the ley lines,” the vet reported.  “And as I’m sure you know, if the ley lines you should follow…” he trailed off, giving Stiles a pointed look.

Stiles scoffed.  “That adage doesn’t apply here, Deats.”  He waved between himself and his other self.

“It’s merely a story that explains different phenomenon involving the ley lines,” Deaton said, packing up his things and ignore the impatient looks from the pack. 

“Bullshit.  It’s a quote from a fey.  It’s prophetic.  And my presence hasn’t been hollowed.”  He looked down at the other Stiles.  “If anything my presence has been – ” his heart stuttered and his breath caught in his throat.  “Doubled,” he whispered, staring at his other self in new light.  “Shit.”  He scrambled backwards, nearly tripping into a bookcase.  “I have to get out of here.  I can’t believe I’m so fucking stupid.”  Stiles jabbed a finger at Deaton.  “How can _you_ be so fucking stupid.” 

“What is it?” Derek asked, on high alert. 

Stiles stared at him, then at everyone else in the room.  He had already started to feel as if this were normal, that these were people he knew.  But they weren’t.  These were strangers with friendly faces.  But they were still people and he didn’t want to ruin their lives like he’s fucked up everything else.  “The Double Walker cannot survive where the Double Walker dwells,” he told them.

“Double Walker?” the other Stiles asked.

“Doppelgänger, Stiles.  A harbinger of death.”  He looked at all of them again.  Those he’s seen die once before.  Those who were already given a second chance at life.  Those who have had too much ripped away from them already.  “The longer I stay here, the more likely one or both of us will die.”


	2. unsaid

Stiles gnawed at the nail of his thumb.  It didn’t feel right, being in this universe.  It was like one giant slap in the face.  It had taken Deaton a while to calm him down.  The vet was insistent that this didn’t fall under doppelgänger jurisdiction.  Those were stories of apparitions, mirror doubles, and trickster spirits.  Not of crossing dimensions. 

“That’s speculation on your part,” Stiles had snapped.

“It’s speculation on yours as well,” Deaton rebutted.

Better to err on the side of caution, Stiles had thought.  Which was hysterical, considering.  When in his life had he ever been cautious?  He’d run head first into every problem he’d ever faced, which was probably the reason his life sucked so much.  He had destroyed everything he cared about in his rush to stop the pain.

Now he sat in the library den of another him, anxiously waiting for _them_ to make a decision on where he should go.  They were right, in one sense.  Stiles couldn’t just walk right out of there.  He had no documentation, no transportation, only three dollars cash and dud credit cards.  The Stiles of this universe was also very recognizable around town.  He had no resources and everything going against him.

He chewed a bit too hard at the corner of his thumb, pulling back with a hiss as it broke skin.  “Shit.”  He sucked on the open wound and searched for a tissue or something in his double’s desk.  The first drawer was nothing but pens and highlighters and loose paperclips.  The was full of old notebooks, subjected to the kind of abuse only Stiles could truly manage.  He grabbed one at random and ripped out a blank sheet.  He tore a strip and wrapped it around his thumb.  It would be good enough for now.

Stiles was about to slam the drawer shut when he spotted a familiar notebook among the crammed chaos.  They were all mostly familiar.  Many looked like the ones he had used to take notes in undergrad.  This one, however, was Lydia’s.  He pulled out the old red spiral and flipped through the pages.  Trees.  Every page the same tree. 

Even after all these years, Stiles still counted his fingers from time to time.  He still woke up screaming.  All because of that stupid tree stump in the woods and his inability to shut his own mind off.  Stiles had learned a few tricks since then to keep anything and everything out.  Not even Lydia could hear him if he didn’t let her.

There was a soft knock on the door before it swung open.  Allison looked over him with her arms crossed.  “Snooping?”

Stiles raised the notebook to show her what he had found.  “What happened to Lydia?”  If she were still part of the pack in this timeline, she would have been here by now.

Alison quirked her head like she was confused.  “She went to MIT.  We were barely talking by then anyway.  Why?”  She walked over and took the notebook from Stiles.  “Oh yeah, I remember this.  She was acting weird during the time the Darach was around.  You, I mean, Stiles thought it was related.  But as soon as Stiles figured out that our English teacher bewitched Derek and we took her down, Lydia stopped drawing trees.” 

Stiles only stared, trying to pick apart her history from his own.  “Why did you and Lydia stop being friends?”

Allison tossed the notebook back into the middle drawer.  “She always resented me from keeping her away from this life.  It was pretty obvious I was keeping secrets.”

His eyes widened.  “Lydia doesn’t _know_?”  It sounded impossible.  Lydia was the smartest person he knew.  In any reality she would have figured things out whether or not her friends let her in on the supernatural.   

Allison looked as if she had questions, but the way her mouth tightened gave away her impatience.  “Come on.  We’ve got a temporary solution.” 

Stiles pushed out of the desk chair and took a last look around the den.  It would take years to go through all these resources.  He hoped the other him had an index somewhere.  He’d be disappointed in himself if he hadn’t.

The whole pack, or at least what Stiles could assume to be the whole pack, was waiting in the living room.  “So what’s the stitch?” Stiles asked.  Deaton had left, and he felt oddly lost without the only other magic user to help comprehend the situation.

Their Stiles rolled forward.  Stiles had started calling him OS in his head for Other Stiles, but even that was being shortened to something that sounded like Oz.  Stiles tracked OS’s movements.  After a year and some change he was fluid with the chair that moved him from place to place.  It was jarring, knowing OS had such a big part of himself that he didn’t share with Stiles. 

“We’ve discussed the risks with Deaton,” OS said.  “And we’re choosing to keep you here.”

“Well I guess it’s true, I am an idiot,” Stiles muttered. 

The other him wasn’t impressed.  “We’ll call you my cousin Nik.  You’re in town early to help with the wedding.”

“Wedding?”  His eyes darted around the pack, but nobody was wearing rings. 

“You’ll be staying here, in a guest room, where we can keep an eye on you until we can figure the rest out.”

“Wedding?” Stiles repeated. 

Derek placed a hand on OS’s shoulder.  “It’s next month.”  He looked constipated, sharing this information with Stiles, but when Derek looked down to OS, his eyes turned warm and fond.  It was an expression Stiles didn’t think he’d ever seen, not even to Braeden. 

“What the fuck.”  Everyone in the room was giving him odd looks.  “You two are _together_?” 

“Are you and your Derek… not?” Erica asked, flummoxed. 

Stiles really wished he had a drink right about now.  He ran a tired hand over his face, trying to rub away the shock and surprise.  “If you are all going to keep me here, I need to know everything.  I can’t be thrown off guard every time something is different, I can’t go running into people I thought were dead or looking for people I thought were alive.”  He couldn’t get his eyes to look at OS or Derek.  It was too weird.  It was too far removed from his own life.  How many other things were different?

Suddenly Stiles recalled OS’s reaction when he had asked where Scott was.  It was like a punch to a gut.  He had lost his friendship with Scott out of grief and resentment and bitter grudges, but Scott was always still _there_.  He always would be.  But here?

The only reason his breath didn’t catch in his throat was the same reason you can’t cry after sobbing for hours.  His body still hadn’t come all the way down from the last two panic attacks.  He was riding a thin line of always out of breath which kept him from losing it completely.

“Is Scott dead?”

“It was my fault,” OS said, his voice on the verge of cracking.  He sounded like Stiles felt.  As if everything was just _too much._   “I dragged him out into the woods.  There was a body.  He got bit by a rogue alpha.  He didn’t survive.”

Stiles nodded.  “I blamed myself, too.  But he became a werewolf.  And our lives were never okay after that.”  That wasn’t true.  Scott’s life was okay, probably.  He had his pack.  He had a home and a family and a career.  He didn’t have Stiles anymore.  But Scott probably didn’t miss that. “How’d you get mixed up in everything if Scott didn’t turn?”

So they told him.  Isaac ordered Chinese, doubling up on OS’s order without asking.  Stiles probably would have eaten anything, but was glad to see his favorite meal from Lucky Dragon.  At least that was the same.

Between bites of lo mein and crab Rangoon, Stiles listened to the whole pack map out the story since Scott’s failed bite in the woods when they were sophomores in high school.  He tried not to speak up and ask questions that would get them off pace. 

He knows they picked up on his reactions.  It wasn’t the things they were saying, but rather the things they weren’t that made his heart speed up and his scent go sour.  He couldn’t hide the horrified look he sent Malia when it became increasingly obvious that they hadn’t found her in high school.  The heartbreak when he realized Derek still didn’t know about Cora.  She hadn’t been with the alpha pack, it wasn’t part of their plan to moon starve anyone.  He almost stopped breathing when the timeline got closer to his father’s death and no such thing was mentioned.  Tears threatened the corners of his eyes knowing his dad was alive and well in this universe. 

“While I was recovering after the accident,” OS powered on, “I went a little stir crazy.  Finished cataloguing the library and made Isaac bring me things from the vault.  It’s where I found the records on Malia.  Dad told me about her cold case.  It took a while to get her to turn back, but she’s been with the pack for almost a year now.”  OS rubbed the back of his head.  “I think that brings you up to speed.”  He looked around the pack to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. 

“Now are you going to tell us why you’re freaking out so bad?” Erica asked, tossing her hair over her shoulder.  “Because you smelling like that is really disturbing.”

“ _Erica_ ,” Derek hissed.

“What!  They smell exactly the same.  I feel like Stiles is in danger and pain because this double is in our house.”

Their argument gave Stiles enough time to take a deep breath and compose himself.  “It’s not a big deal.  Just, a lot of things are different.”  He had a hard time looking at them.  He didn’t know how to bring up the big bads that were still lurking around town.  There was still a serial killer at Eichen House, there was still a nogitsune trapped under the nemeton, there was still Peter’s corpse that could be reanimated under the wrong circumstances. 

Something so stupid, like Lydia and Jackson not breaking up because Jackson hadn’t learned about werewolves, because there was no werewolf Scott in the school, meant that they went to the winter formal together and Lydia was never alone on the lacrosse field ready to be bit by Peter. 

Meredith never started the deadpool because Peter never came back to life. 

There were so many threads Stiles could follow, all spiraling out from the mere difference in Scott’s ability to accept the bite.  It changed who knew what, who was where, when things happened.  Less people died.

Malia got the short end of the stick, having less time as a human, but she seemed better adjusted right now than she had as a teenager, angry and alone before latching onto Stiles like a duckling imprinting onto a dog. 

“Are you going to tell us?” Allison asked, sounding both intrigued and worried.

He felt paralyzed.  How do you tell someone that you’re responsible for their death in a different timeline?  That because of events that they were lucky enough to avoid, you let loose an evil spirit that killed so many people. 

Stiles couldn’t do that to these people.  He shook his head.  “Doesn’t matter.  You’re never going to be there.”

“You said I died,” Erica pointed out, shoulders back and eyes defiant.  “When we found you out in the woods you said that as far as you knew I was dead.  What happened to us?”

Stiles grit his teeth and forced himself to look Erica square in the eye.  “You’re not dead.  You’re right there, looking at me like I’m a mild inconvenience.  What happened in my life, my past, my timeline, doesn’t fucking matter here.  You don’t need to know what happened to your doubles.  It’s not your life.”

“Then why the fuck did we just go through the highlights reel of every disaster to come to Beacon Hills!” Erica snapped.

There was a tense silence over the pack.  Derek sighed heavily.  “Come on.  It’s been a long day.  Let’s rest up and figure how to proceed in the morning.”  When no one moved, Derek leaned down and kissed OS on the forehead.  “I’ll meet you in bed, come on.”  He then looked to Stiles and motioned him to follow. 

Erica began to protest, but Derek flashed his red eyes and she snapped her mouth shut before storming off.  Stiles couldn’t help but watch as Allison slowly made her way out the front, telling the others to call if anything weird happened.  Boyd kept his eyes on Stiles until Derek led him up the stairs and out of sight. 

Derek opened a door to a large guest room.  It even had its own bath. 

“Jeeze, I know you’re rich, but do you even use this room?”

Derek leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, watching Stiles take in the room.  “It was ours, until the accident.  Had to move everything downstairs.” 

Stiles stilled, eyes fixed on the generic wall art that probably came from Ikea.  “Does the rest of the pack live here?”

“Only Malia.  The rest have rooms if they need it.”

Stiles nodded.  It was weird, creepy almost, knowing this Malia.  She was an adult, but everything about her screamed the fact she hadn’t really grown up yet.  She was still too new.  It was a whole new woman and Stiles knew parts of her intimately.  Malia in his world hated him.  He felt like he was somehow got a cheat code to a new relationship with her.  Like if they became friends, it would be betraying the woman who’s heart he’d broken one too many times.  “How come you didn’t give her this room?”

“It didn’t have any furniture yet at the time.  She got settled in what was actually a guest room before we could get anything.”  They stood in silence for a moment before Derek cleared his throat.  “Do you need anything?  I doubt you packed for this trip.”

Stiles snorted, a surprised smile quirking the corners of his mouth.  “I forgot you could be funny.  Yeah, no, I’m still wearing day old clubbing clothes.  If you’ve got something I can wear, a gallon of mouthwash maybe.  I feel like there’s glitter in my mouth.”

Derek nodded towards the attached bathroom.  “There’s fresh towels and soap and everything.  I’ll go grab you clothes.  I’ll leave them on the bed.”

Stiles looked Derek up and down.  He looked casual, clam, like this a normal occurrence.  “Thanks, Derek.”  He cleared his throat and looked away.  “Do you think you can let me borrow a computer or something?” 

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

While Stiles stood in the insanely generic guest bedroom, pointedly not looking at Derek, the other man left, shutting the door behind him.  Stiles peeled off his jacket and sweaty shirt, dropping them on the floor on the way to the bathroom.  He was desperate for this shower. 

When he finally stepped out, there was a pair of pajama pants and a whole pack of new underwear.  Stiles snorted.  There was also a stack of clothes for tomorrow.  They didn’t look new.  He wondered if they were OS’s.  An old beat up laptop sat next to the clothes.

When Derek came knocking at his door next, Stiles didn’t even register the noise until the werewolf was inside the room and shaking his shoulder.  Stiles looked up from the laptop with a jolt.  Derek was carefully holding his hand back.

“Jesus!” Stiles huffed, putting a hand over his heart.  “What?”

Derek looked at him oddly.  There was worry in his eyes but also amusement.  His lips quirked up slightly in an expression Stiles had never seen on the man.  “It’s nine in the morning.  I heard you typing, so I figured I’d ask if you want breakfast.  Surprised you didn’t shock me again.”

Stiles blinked wearily a few times before looking back at the computer screen.  “I have more research to do.”

“Have you been up all night?” Derek scoffed. 

Stiles nodded, digging the palm of his hands into his eyes.  He yawned around his words as he told Derek what he had been up to.  “Got in contact with some of the people I went to grad school with.  Was fun trying to get them to trust me when I didn’t actually attend school with them in this universe.  And you’re right, I can’t move around without any sort of documentation, so I ordered the full set.  Danny has this hacker friend that’s great at that shit.  He used to owe me a favor, but I’m going to have to pay for this.  I’ll figure out how.” 

Derek sighed.  “Stiles, go to sleep.  I’ll wake you up for lunch.  I’m taking this.”  He reached over to shut the laptop. 

Stiles shot his hand out and grabbed Derek’s arm.  “Wait!” he shouted.  He was halfway through the articles Melanie sent over on double walkers and had been making good cross reference notes with the stuff Harper had scanned about parallel universes.  He hadn’t even touched Mark’s dissertation yet. 

“It’ll be here when you wake up,” Derek promised. 

Stiles only held onto Derek harder.  “I’ve also made a list,” he said gravely.

“A list of what?”

Stiles scratched at his shoulder and looked away.  “Of things you need to know.”

They wouldn’t listen to him about the danger of double walkers.  Not yet.  Not until things got worse, as they always did around Stiles.  But he caught everything they hadn’t told him the day before.  He wrote down the things he could help out with.  The serial killer in the Eichen House, the list of creatures they hadn’t yet encountered and what they needed to fight them, and, most importantly, that Cora was alive.


	3. schism

Stiles woke up, groggy and confused about whose bed he was in.  He wondered for a moment if he had gotten lucky last night before remembering that he was in a different universe and he had never been lucky in his entire life.  His head was pounding from staying up until morning and the lack of food in his stomach.  Something akin to barbeque wafted upstairs and that was enough to convince Stiles to get out of bed and face the hot mess that was his existence.

He took his time in the hallway, looking over every pack photo that decorated the walls.  Erica tossing Boyd into a lake.  Isaac holding a lacrosse trophy in his BHHS uniform.  The whole pack standing in front of a pub with a grand opening banner.  Himself and Derek in grossly obvious engagement photos.  Stiles stared at that one for a while. 

His hunger and the sound of tense voices urged him down the stairs and to the kitchen where Stiles promptly lost his appetite.

The voices cut off as Stiles entered the room and he found himself staring into the face of his wizened old father. It had only been three years.  A lifetime.  “Dad?” Stiles croaked out before immediately regretting it.  The man who wasn’t actually his father raced across the kitchen and pulled Stiles into a tight hug.  He was whispering words like _it’s okay_ and _I’ve got you_ and other nonsense while Stiles kept up a steady mantra in his head.  _This is not my father._

John stepped back, gripping Stiles’s arms and giving him a thorough look over.  “Look at you, you’re skin and bones!  Do they not have groceries where you come from?”

Stiles cleared his throat and took in the rest of the kitchen.  Derek was by the oven, whispering something to OS who was pointedly not looking their way.  He took a step back, shaking off John’s grip and took a deep breath.  The only thing keeping the panic attack at bay was the stifling sense that he should be _doing_ something.

“Sorry,” Stiles said before clearing his throat again.  “This is weird.  Maybe I should just –”

“Nonsense!” John cried.  “Derek’s just pulled some pork and I brought hoagies.”

“But I,” Stiles tried to protest again.  OS looked over at them before rolling out of the kitchen and to the dining room.  Derek sighed heavily.  Stiles could guess what was going on.  He wouldn’t want his dad showering a mysterious clone with fatherly attention either.  “Hey, Derek?  Can I have that computer back?  I need to see if my contacts have gotten back to me.”

His stomach growled loudly at that moment.  John gave him such a patented dad look Stiles felt as if he was tearing at the seams.  What Stiles thought he would have given just to be scolded by his dad again, but this made his stomach roll.  This wasn’t his dad.  This wasn’t his life.  He hadn’t found a magical oasis pocket in space and time where he had his family again.  He didn’t belong here.  He didn’t deserve the care and comfort of this stranger who already treated him like his son.

“I have to go,” Stiles said, running away from the situation before he spent too long cataloging how John’s hair had gotten grayer or the new speckling of liver spots around his temples.  He wanted nothing more than to hold onto that man and never let go but he couldn’t.  He couldn’t take what wasn’t his.

A few moments later Derek came up the stairs and knocked on the guest room door.  Stiles stared up from where he sat on the bed and waited for Derek to enter.  It only took a moment.  “Sorry.  I should have warned you, I guess.”

Stiles wiped away a tear he hadn’t managed to hold back.  “When could you have?  I was asleep when he came over.”  Stiles wished he had his things.  Or any things.  The room was devoid of personality, just the essentials for a visitor or a drunk friend to crash the night.  Stiles wanted to busy himself with notes and a clicky-pen or the ingredients to a spell.  He needed something to do with his hands that wasn’t just twisting the fabric of a borrowed t-shirt.  “Besides, it doesn’t matter.  He’s not my dad.”

Derek stared at Stiles for a couple of excruciating heartbeats before walking over and crouching so that they were at eye level.  “I know it’s not the same.  It can’t be the same seeing any of us.  And I know Stiles is sort of freak out seeing you and John together, but that’s no reason to run up here and hide.”

Stiles let out a rough push of hair, angry at the situation and the fact that Derek can never leave anything alone.  “My dad’s dead, Derek.”

The look of surprise and hurt on Derek’s face was enough to force Stile out of his stupor.  It’s not that Stiles thought Derek from his line was emotionless and stone faced; he’d seen that man break down, fight his abusers, defend his pack, and maybe even fall in love.  But Stiles had never seen this kind of empathy, especially not about Stiles.  “I’m so sorry,” Derek whispered, sitting back onto his heels so they weren’t quite as close.  “I knew things were off when we told you everything that happened here, but I never expected.”  Derek looked as if he’d been told his loved one was dead.  Not a stranger, not some mysterious double’s father. 

For a moment Stiles could understand how OS fell for this asshole. 

“Most of you are dead,” Stiles said, pushing to his feet and crossing the room before realizing he had nothing to do, nowhere to go.  He didn’t even have the laptop Derek lent him last night.  “I can shake it off, it’s fine.”  He looked around again, needing something to occupy him.  “Do you think you can get me that computer again?  I might be able to make headway on some matters.”

Derek sighed and left the room.  A few minutes later he came back and lightly tossed the laptop onto the bed.  Derek hesitated by the door, struggling with his words in a familiar expression.  “Cora’s alive?”

Stiles rubbed his shoulder and lowered his head.  “I don’t know.  I can’t account for changes.  But in my line she is.  Was in the woods when the fire started, ran away.  My guy can find her for you, either way.”

Derek rapped his fingers against the doorframe once, twice.  He gripped the frame perhaps a little too tightly but then nodded. 

“I’ll bring up a plate.”  

Stiles didn’t say thank you, although he probably should have. 

Stiles sat back down and pulled open the laptop.  He pulled up all the documents he had been sifting through and immediately opened his latest email from C:Breax.  The man had been surprisingly responsive to the idea of giving a stranger a full set of fake identification, including the degrees he earned back home.  Stiles had been waiting on what his price was. 

He sighed, staring at the email.  He’d need to get materials from Deaton for this.  He worried for a moment if he’d be making poison for a killer, but it wouldn’t really matter.  Not that Stiles wanted to be indirectly responsible for deaths of peoples in this reality, but if there was a killer aware of the supernatural wanting this particular type of poison, Stiles’s involvement would be incidental and whoever they were trying to kill would end up dead anyway. 

Besides, the people who tended to use it as poison had much cheaper, easier options.  More likely C:Breax would use it for medicine or was addicted to it as a drug.  No matter, the item was worth the trade.  The number of documents he was asking for would otherwise cost thousands. 

Besides, if this was _Danny’s_ friend, there was no way he was actually a psycho killer.  Like, sure, Danny had been friends with Jackson and dated an alpha werewolf who very much did kill people, but he got better judgement in college. 

Stiles wondered if OS stayed in touch with Danny.  He and Stiles weren’t close by any stretch, but they always let each other know what was going on and shared relevant information.  In his own timeline, Stiles spent a spring break helping Danny out which had earned him the favor from C:Breax he unfortunately can’t use here. 

He sighed and rubbed out a kink in his shoulder.  He’d ask Derek about getting over to Deaton’s when he came back.

Speak of the devil, there was a knock at the door and it pushed open.  Stiles looked up from the computer and froze.  Derek hadn’t returned.  It was his… not his dad. 

“You don’t want to see me because you’re not actually my son?” John asked, sounding so offended Stiles felt like a twelve-year-old being scolded. 

“You’re not my dad,” Stiles reminded him.  “Your son’s downstairs.”

“Yeah, I know that,” John huffed.  “You live with a pain in the ass that long you develop a honing beacon for them.”

“Did you get Deaton to put a tracking chip in his neck?” Stiles joked. 

John laughed at that, a full bellied sound that shook Stiles to his core.  He’d forgotten the sound of his father’s laugh.  How long had it been, even when his dad was alive?  It wasn’t that they had stopped talking, but Stiles was already falling into bad habits once he left for college.  Stiles wasn’t talking to the pack, he and Malia had broken up again, he wasn’t making new friends.  His father was always stressed with the supernatural happenings back home and they just… they were both busy.  And when they were together, what time did they have for laughing?

“Listen, you have the same god-forsaken name as my boy, right?”

Stiles swallowed down the lump in his throat and nodded.  “Yeah, there’s a reason I went by Stiles.”

“And from the run down I got this morning, the differences between your life and our lives started  when you were sixteen?”

Stiles frowned and shrugged.  “Seems that way.  Didn’t really bother asking about stuff from before then because the supernatural shit was what I needed to know.”

“All those years with Claudia are still the same, though.”

Stiles felt the semblance of composure he was sporting shatter.  This man, so much like his father, looked at him with those kind eyes full of warmth and love and all the things Stiles didn’t deserve.

“I’m not your son,” Stiles insisted, breath catching in his throat.  He was suffocating in this new reality.  He wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Kiddo, you’re my son,” John said with a shake of his head.  “Long lost twin, runaway at sixteen, switched at birth, hopped through a wormhole from a different space time whatever science fiction nonsense.  I’m going to love you like my own as long as you’re with us.  So, stop moping up here and join us for lunch.  Of do you need me to physically drag you away from that computer?”

Stiles remembered all the times his dad had actually done that to get him out for school.  Normally aided by a rolling chair, of course.  He doubted this older version of his father could move Stiles if Stiles didn’t want him to, but he shut the laptop anyway. 

“Yeah,” he whispered.  “Okay.”

“Perfect!” John cheered, clapping Stiles on the shoulder.  “Now Derek said we were calling you Nik?”

Stiles nodded.  “Having two of us around makes it confusing.”  Stiles stood up and grabbed the laptop to bring downstairs.  He still had work to do after all.  “I’ve been calling your Stiles Oz in my head for O. S., Other Stiles.” 

John laughed again and Stiles’s knees almost buckled under him.  “Oz.  Like that character in Buffy who’s a werewolf?  That’s precious.  Can’t get away from them.”  He grinned back at Stiles as they made their way downstairs, but this time Stiles caught the look hidden in his eyes. 

Puzzlement.  Wonder.  Fear.  Stiles didn’t know if this version of his father was still the Sheriff or not, but all those years on the force wouldn’t go away with retirement.  He may say he cares about Stiles, he may actually care about Stiles like he was OS, but he was still going to be cautious until more information surfaced.  There was no protocol for this, and John’s spent the last eight years understanding the supernatural.  He wasn’t going to let his guard down so easily.

“I always forget about that character.  Haven’t watched Buffy since I was maybe fifteen.”

John shrugged.  “Stiles and the pack like to watch supernatural shows and movies.  Think it’s funny.  Marathonned the whole show at our place your senior year of high school.”

Stiles hummed noncommittally.  He was nervous about rejoining OS for multiple reasons.  First being the fact that OS’s father was here calling Stiles _son_.  Second, OS and Derek were getting fucking married and Stiles still hasn’t figured out how to process that information.  Every time they act loving towards each other freaks him out.  Third, and probably the most important, is that nothing in his research so far discounts the idea that he’d taken the role of a double walker by being here.  There shouldn’t be two Stiles in one universe.  It can only spell trouble.

Stiles was coming up with ideas on what to do.  “I need to get over to Deaton’s,” Stiles announced as he walked into the dining room and set up his laptop.  He’d eat with them but John was mistaken to think that Stiles would be sociable.  “The guy making my IDs and looking for Cora’s contact information wants a, uh, paste things I can make as payment.  Which, be thankful to your wallets because I’m broke in this universe.  Ingredients aren’t that much.”

He could feel the stares of the group on him.  Derek audibly sighed and pushed a plate his way.  Stiles looked up accidentally when he reached for the sandwich and caught eyes with OS.  He shivered like being shocked from a live wire.  OS’s eyes widened and he reared his head back with a start. 

“What the fuck?” OS snapped, looking very pointedly where Stiles hand was hovering above the plate of food. 

Stiles looked down.  The pulled pork sandwich was smoking, a charcoal bun and hard black glazed barbeque.  He looked at the rest of the plates.  They looked good enough to be in a cooking magazine.  “Did that _just_ happen?”

“Yeah,” Derek said warily. 

Stiles rubbed his fingers together.  They were tingling.  “Huh.”  He picked up the sandwich and looked it over before taking a bite.  Stiles shrugged.  “Still tastes good.”  He started finishing up with the articles Melanie had sent over.  The spark of energy was alarming. 

“Are you going to tell us what that’s about?” OS asked.

Stiles looked over his laptop and set the pulled pork down.  He grabbed a napkin to wipe his fingers and grimaced as he looked around the table.  “Magical accident,” he shrugged.  “Used to happen when I was first studying how to train my spark.”  Stiles rubbed his fingers together again.  “Weird that it’s happening now.  Adding it to my notes of things going on now that I’m here.  Now if you don’t mind.  I have a lot of research to do.” 

“Stil- Nik,” Derek said, correcting himself before rubbing at his eyes.  “We all know what you’re like when you get into a research binge.  Take a break.  Talk to us.  Eat some food.”

“Eating,” Stiles said picking up his charred sandwich, “talking, no need for a break.”  He bit into the sandwich and scrolled through Melanie’s last article. 

“Am I really that much of a dick?” OS asked, vigorously biting into his own sandwich. 

“Only sometimes,” Derek smirked, wiping a bit of barbeque sauce off OS’s cheek. 

Stiles nearly choked on his food. 

“You okay there, kiddo?” John asked, shifting in his seat at the awkward atmosphere. 

Stiles nodded and downed half the can of Coke that had been placed next to him.  “Sorry,” he croaked out after clearing his throat.  “Just still getting used to, uh,” he waved his sandwich vaguely in Derek and OS’s direction.  “That.”

“I still not sure I believe there’s a universe where we’re not together,” OS said, side eyeing Stiles.  Derek smiled shoved OS’s head playfully. 

“Gag me with a spoon,” Stiles muttered.

“Did you just unironically say _gag me with a spoon_?” OS asked.

“My entire life is ironic,” Stiles replied, typing up some notes with one hand.  “In my line, Derek and I barely talk, let alone wipe sauce off each other’s faces.”  Stiles pulled open Mark’s dissertation and skimmed through the intro paragraph, hoping to shut down further questioning. 

“How’d you manage that?” John scoffed.

“ _Dad_ ,” OS hissed.  “Can we just drop the double life talk?  It’s tripping me up.”  OS grabbed his own sandwich and bit into it aggressively.

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Stiles snarked.

Derek let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling.  “How about we tell, uh, your cousin _Nik_ all about the wedding plans he’s helping with?” Derek suggested.  “It’s going to be in the backyard, nothing crazy.”

“Um, excuse you, I’ve been on Pintrest for the better part of a year looking up all the cool things we can do to decorate.”  OS went on about his plans, the binder he’d been putting together since long before Derek proposed, and the crates of decorations he, Erica, and Allison had already started on. 

Stiles kept reading Mark’s paper, trying his best and failing at ignoring OS and Derek talk about their upcoming wedding.  Stiles caught himself staring, halfway through typing a sentence, because he couldn’t remember a time he was ever that passionate and animated about something he loved.  About _someone_ he loved.  Stiles couldn’t remember being that excited and happy. 

They were so fucking in love and it was making him sick. 

Stiles had never imagined his wedding.  Not with Malia.  They were always living in the moment, which was probably why they kept falling back into bed with each other despite how terribly things worked out each time.  He only ever hooked up with people at college and grad school, not enough of a connection to think of a future.  He never even thought about some distant future with a shadowy unknown spouse just to day dream about the type of cake and centerpieces and first dance songs. 

All he ever had in his life was the repetition of not being enough when it counted the most.  And this other Stiles.  Other Stiles had a life, a family, friends.  It didn’t matter if it was with Derek or not, Stiles supposed.  This other him was getting married.  He was happy.  He was loved.

Stiles shook his head and refocused his attention on Mark’s dissertation.  It was about Evil Twins and the prevailing theories of opposing energies in the universe.  It only sort of had relevance to what Stiles was researching.  He was hoping the next section would talk more about prolonged exposure to the evil twin trope. 

The front door opened and Malia could be heard complaining about how her stupid dad was treating her like she was still eight. 

“Dude,” Isaac said, in reply, “you’ve only been back a few months and you’re living with strangers.  Give him more time.”  They walked into the dining room and Isaac immediately picked up a plate.  “Awe, sweet.  There’s extra.  Smelled this from outside.” 

“Stiles!” Malia cheered, giving OS a peck on the cheek.  She looked over at Stiles and scrunched her nose up in a familiar expression.  “Hey!  Maybe Sad-Stiles knows how to deal with my dad.”

“Sad-Stiles?” he huffed.  How fucking appropriate.

Derek nearly coughed out his drink at the interaction.  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and laughed awkwardly.  “Uh, yeah.  You have identical base scents but there’s a permeation of your chemo-signals,” Derek tried to explain, trailing off with an uneasy look.

Stiles waved him off.  “Yeah, Malia always used to sniff out my anxiety.  None of this surprises me.”

“Used to?” Malia asked. 

“Yeah, back in –” Stiles cut himself off and looked back up from his notes. 

“Back in what?” Malia nagged, sounding just as hurt and confused as she did in Eichen House so many years ago.

Stiles cleared his throat.  “It doesn’t matter.  Listen, I don’t know how to help you with your dad.  He’s a hot mess.  He lost his entire family and you were missing so long he feels guilty about never finding you.  It’ll take years of therapy and he’ll always be super awkward when he finds about the shapeshifting stuff.”

There was a heavy silence over the dining room.  “Sounds like you’re talking from experience,” John said.

Stiles frowned.  He hadn’t meant to tell them things about his life.  He knew first hand how seeing the differences can fuck with you.  What-ifs and could-have-beens wouldn’t stop running through his mind.  He couldn’t stop comparing his life to this life.  Himself to OS.  Scott was dead, but there were so many other people alive.  He guessed they were all alive somewhere.  Stiles shut the laptop and stood, scooping the computer under his arm.

“Isaac, can you drive me to Deaton’s?”

“Wah? I juss gah ere,” Isaac whined around a mouthful of pulled pork. 

“Dude,” Stiles and OS said in unison.  They looked at each other and then pointedly looked away.

“I hate to say this, but Deaton is the most unchanged person in this timeline to mine.  I really need to be around something in a semblance of normal.”  Stiles headed for the front door before he got a response.  He didn’t know how much longer he could do this. 

The midday sun hit his eyes as he stepped outside.  Stiles breathed deeply and squinted at the sky.  There was a stillness to these woods that he wasn’t used to.  He scratched at his shoulder, restless in his own skin. 

A few moments later Isaac came out, keys in hand and half a sandwich in his mouth.  He amazingly finished it by the time he slid into the driver’s seat of his beat up car.  The peeling green paint seemed out of place next to the Camaro and sleek black SUV Boyd took to work. 

“Yeah, well I bought this with my own money,” Isaac laughed when Stiles pointed it out.  “So, um.  How well do you actually know Malia’s dad?”

Stiles thought back to the few times he spent at Malia’s house back in high school.  It was awkward enough dealing with your girlfriend’s dad.  It was worse with a man who had his daughter back from the dead and was a thousand times more protective.  Then when the supernatural bomb dropped, the man turned the dial up to eleven on the you’re-not-good-enough-for-my-daughter scale.  He was never comfortable with Malia being a shifter, with her friends and pack being superpowered secrets, or the fact that his little girl has literally killed people.  But he was still proud of her accomplishments in school and how often she saved people.  It was a mixed bag.

“He’s an asshole,” Stiles said.  “But he still loves her.  He’ll just never really get it, what she’s gone through.”

“I’m assuming you found Malia before we did,” Isaac said solemnly. 

“Junior year of high school,” Stiles admitted. 

Isaac was quiet for the rest of the ride. 

When they parked at the vet clinic Stiles reached his hand out to stop Isaac for a moment.  “Don’t tell her.”  He’d done his fair share of hurting Malia.  She didn’t need this.  “I can guess she’s been freaking out about how out of touch she is with humanity, and it’s a struggle.  She doesn’t need to be thinking about who she would be if she were found earlier.  Malia seems well adjusted here, you guys are helping her so much better than we could back then.”

Isaac didn’t respond one way or the other.  He seemed deep in thought, eyes distant and brow furrowed, as he stepped out of the car.  Isaac tapped the roof two times, “Come on,” and walked to the back door.

“You can just go home,” Stiles offered as he hopped out of the car.  He didn’t know if Deaton would have everything he needed to make C:Breax’s payment, but either way he was going to stay here a while.  He needed a break from that house and the pack.  Besides, Deaton will no doubt have books for Stiles to look through.  “I’ll be here for a while.”

Isaac raised one of his perfectly shaped eyebrows.

“And thanks for the ride?”

Isaac shook his head and headed inside.  “I don’t freak you out as much as the rest,” Isaac observed. 

Stiles shrugged, taking in the wholly unchanged back room.  “You’re more like someone I haven’t seen in a long time than, uh, the others.” Malia was at a completely different developmental point, Derek was in love with his other self, there was a second one of himself, and basically everybody else had died.  He shivered thinking about it.  “Don’t ask why, please.”

“Not sure I want to,” Isaac admitted.  “But I figured if I don’t freak you out, I might make a good intermediary.  Don’t have any work today, anyway.”

“What do you do?”

“Freelance web development.”

Stiles made a hum of acknowledgement, the small talk dying quickly.  Deaton walked through the doors soon enough to spare them of the growing silence. 

“Isaac, Stiles,” he said, nodding in turn, wiping his hands with a towel.  “What can I do for you?”

Stiles scratched at his shoulder again, suddenly anxious over Deaton’s inevitable disapproval.  “I need to make a nightshade epoxy.”


	4. lorn

Deaton was not impressed with Stiles’s means of bartering but he reluctantly agreed to help Stiles gather the ingredients.  There were only a handful of them in Deaton’s collection already, but the man knew where to cultivate or purchase the rest.  It would take a few weeks and Stiles was once again put on the waiting game.    

True to his word, Stiles stayed at the vets to do more research.  It was lax, not as hyper focused as he forced himself to be at the house.  Stiles and Isaac found a middle ground, talking about movies.  Those hadn’t changed between worlds, at least.  His world was upside down, but at least he could cling to his pop culture. 

Talking with Isaac really wasn’t that bad.  It was weird, to say the least, when he would bring up stuff about high school and college and Beacon Hills when Stiles knew the boy in his world hadn’t stepped foot in this god forsaken town in almost a decade.  Still, Isaac wasn’t nearly as much of an asshole as Stiles remembered.  All grown up, he guessed. 

They set up a sort of routine over the next few days.  Isaac came over and helped him pour through the books in the library OS had categorized and the stack Deaton had let them borrow.  Working “from home” made things a bit more difficult.  He couldn’t avoid OS and OS couldn’t avoid him.  It was a lose-lose situation.  But OS had his own work to do, most of the time, working half days at the school as a guidance counselor.

Stiles would have joked about being like Morrell and creepily stalking students who could be in the supernatural world, but it was better than making back alley potions and attempting to make your liver fail. 

“Is this helpful?” Isaac asked, pushing the book he had been flipping through across the desk. 

Stiles picked it up and started reading where Isaac pointed.  It made reference to another work about Double Walkers, one Stiles was familiar with.  _The Double Walker cannot survive where the Double Walker dwells_.  It was an axiom from a larger lexicon of supernatural creatures Stiles had used in his grad school research often.  The lexicon he used – part bestiary, part history book – didn’t have a source for this piece of information, however.  It was merely stated as fact, and every other place Stiles had seen the sentence noted back to the lexicon.

This book, however – a torn volume covered in a leather Stiles didn’t think was neither goat, pig, or calf – had a lead. 

“Yeah,” Stiles whispered, reading the few lines about Double Walkers over again.  “Can you check Oz’s list for _Die verhedderten Fäden des Schicksals und ihre vielen Porträts_?”

“What the fuck?” Isaac asked, staring at Stiles as if he had two heads.

Stiles sighed and pushed the book back to him.  “Just show him this title.  Ask if he has it.  If not, we’ll see if Deaton knows where I can find it.”

Isaac came back twenty minutes later with detailed instructions on where to find the book on the intricately organized shelves.  If Stiles took the time he was sure he could figure it out.  It was his brain that created the puzzle in the first place, after all.  Stiles had managed to find all the books about Ley Lines and Nemetons by himself, but without any more specific focus that thread of research kept hitting dead ends. 

Isaac handed Stiles the thick tome.  It had been rebound in recent years, but from the paper Stiles could tell it was much older than Deaton’s book referencing it.  He was amazed at how easily it fell into his lap.  A title that had been lost to the years, not even the most famous lexicon of the underground world of supernatural legends knew where it had gotten the information about Double Walkers.

“Thanks,” Stiles muttered, flipping through the pages.  The title had been written in German sometime before Deaton’s book wrote about it, but the book itself was in Old High German.  Handwritten cursive graced its pages and he wondered again how it fell into the Hale’s library.  It was going to be a bitch to translate. 

At a certain point, Isaac dragged Stiles out of the den for dinner and Stiles was bombarded by the pack.  Almost everyone was there.  Allison was helping Malia bake a casserole while Boyd had prepared a guaranteed edible meal.  Erica had a shift at the bar, and Derek was probably there, too.  OS wheeled up to his spot at the table and caught Stiles’s eye. 

The tension between them had only been growing.  Derek thought it was hilarious whenever they snapped at each other.  “You’re annoyed by your own habits,” he explained when they both turned on him.  “Both of you, turning every little thing into a nightmare when it’s something you do yourself.”

“You can’t get along with someone too similar to yourself,” OS had muttered.  And it was true.

At the table, OS pulled a few napkins, breaking eye contact with Stiles. “You know German?” he asked with false disinterest. 

“Not well.” 

Isaac sighed heavily as he sat down next to Stiles.  “Please don’t start.”

Stiles thought back to the book he needed to translate and all his other notes.  Double Walkers meant death.  There weren’t _supposed_ to be duplicates.  He wasn’t supposed to be here, at least not at the same time as OS.  It could cause entropic cascade failure, if all the scientific theories were to be believed. 

“Doesn’t matter, either way.  It’s in an older version of German.  I’ll need help translating it.”

“From who?” OS asked, eyes squinting with suspicion.  It was fair, Stiles supposed.  Stiles’s other main point of outside content was an anonymous hacker and forger holding information about Cora hostage until Stiles could make something darkly magical.

Stiles didn’t speak up.  He didn’t want to voice his plans just yet.  He was afraid the pack would stop him from leaving once he got his papers.  But the only person who could read that ancient book was the same person who could read death omens.  He needed to find Lydia.

Malia came in just then with her slightly burnt and oddly bubbling casserole.  The smile on her face was so bright and innocent that Stiles wanted to let go his petty feud with his other self.  Malia discovering herself and her interests in this lifetime was so beautiful.  He wished he hadn’t fucked her up in his own line.  _Your favorite food is pizza_.  God, what an asshole he was.  Malia liked deer.  Stiles should have let his dad treat her to venison.    

“Looks good,” Stiles smiled. 

Malia beamed.  “Allison helped!”

“Allison made sure you didn’t set the kitchen on fire,” Allison interjected, carrying out the vegetables Boyd cooked.  “And didn’t accidentally poison us.”

Malia shrugged and took her seat.  “So, Sad Stiles–”

“Nik,” OS reminded her.

“You can do magic?”

OS rolled his eyes.  “The stuff Deaton does isn’t magic, Malia.”

Stiles shrugged.  “I mean, it kind of is.  Don’t you remember using mountain ash for the first time?”  As soon as he said it, he remembered this Stiles never faced a kanima.  Fought the Alpha’s using different tactics.  Never tried to barricade themselves from Oni.  “Did you ever use mountain ash?”

OS scrunched up his face in a familiar fashion, mocking and snide.  “Yeah.  Deaton gave me a jar of it.  You just have to make an unbroken line of the stuff.”

Stiles shook his head.  That wasn’t exactly right.  “Only if it’s been set up specially ahead of time.  Did you never activate it?  Make a handful into a three?  Create a ring by force alone?”

OS frowned and Stiles realizes that no, he hadn’t.

“I mean, I know you never cultivated your spark.  I never even touched mine much until grad school.  But if I have a spark, so do you.  We smell the same, that hit of something else like Deaton, right?” he turned to Isaac for confirmation. 

Isaac nodded.  “Yeah, it’s a little like too much cinnamon on the tongue.  You have it.  Deaton has it.  Miss Morrell.  Blake.”

“Yeah, all the druids, all the sparks,” Stiles nodded before turning back to Stiles.  “I mean, how else do you explain my accidentally burning a sandwich?  Static shock?”

OS crossed his arms bitterly and turned his head.  Stiles squinted in disbelief, as if narrowing his eyes would help him understand his other self better.  Was he… was he jealous?  “Dude, I can teach you if you wanted.”  He regretted the offer immediately.  He was the last person that should be teaching OS.  They were doppelgängers.  They weren’t supposed to interact.  Luckily, OS didn’t seem too keen on the option either.

“I don’t really want to be more like you.  You seem to be every bad decision I could have made.  Why would I want that?”

Stiles felt his jaw drop.  Yeah.  Stiles was a steady course of bad decisions, a furiously flowing river eroding its banks at every turn.  Stiles wanted to make a joke about not realizing how much more he could hate himself until he literally had a clone hate him.  He laughed instead, a hollow sound that took him back to his old reality.  He only bothered to hone his spark because his dad had died.  Why would this Stiles want that?  Or even want to know that motivation?

“Your fucking loss dude,” Stiles eventually said.  He aggressively spooned out some of Malia’s creation, avoiding eye contact with everyone at the table, even when Boyd entered with a meal that smelled much better than what he was eating.

Stiles diligently ate Malia’s casserole, though.  He didn’t want to poison that girl twice.  Once his plate was cleared, he excused himself without word and headed back to the den.  He wanted to get as much work done as possible before he left.  He only had what he estimated to be a few weeks to comb through thousands of pages.   

Not too long later, Isaac entered the room, talking on his cell.  When Stiles looked up, Isaac handed the phone over.  The screen said _Deaton_.

“Hello?”

_“Stiles.  I’m sorry.  Nik.  Hello.  The last ingredient should be in tomorrow morning.  If you come by after my clinic hours, you can make your item.”_

Stiles let out a breath of relief.  Fucking finally.  “Kay.  Thanks.”  He was about to hang up when it occurred to him.  “Hey, Deats.  How come you never tried to make your Stiles harness his spark?”

There was a long pause on the other side.  Stiles looked over to Isaac, who seemed interested in the answer.  “It’s hard to say.  It could just be I was unable to wait in your line of events, and needed someone else with that skill at hand.  Whereas here, I did not.  It’s difficult to put more thought into that answer as you have not disclosed information about your timeline.”

Stiles rolled his eyes.  “Helpful as ever,” Stiles said.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They both gave brief goodbyes. 

“You think there’s more things different between our worlds?” Isaac asked. 

Stiles shrugged.  “We’ll never know.  Too many things to track.  But compared to me, you guys had it easy.  It could really just be that Deaton had it covered.”  Too many what-if’s played through Stiles’s head and he had a hard time concentrating.  Isaac called it a night at some point, but Stiles kept working.

It wasn’t until there was a soft knock on the door before it creaked open that Stiles realized he had been staring blankly at a book page for at least twenty minutes.  Derek leaned against the doorframe, a heavy frown across his features. 

“Stiles always worked himself sick when I didn’t make sure he ate, during college,” Derek offered.  He spoke softly, not to wake the rest of the house.  Stiles looked at the clock.  It was almost three in the morning. 

“Let me just say I know first hand what he would have gone through without you,” Stiles said, rubbing at his eyes.  “This is impossible.  Double Walkers are such an under researched phenomenon, and jumping time lines is all theoretical science, not magic.  Closest we have is junk about fairy realms.”

Stiles scratched at his neck as he rolled his head back and work out a kink.  Derek cleared his throat and Stiles looked over, blinking slowly. 

“Come on,” Derek said.  “Get to bed.  I know you’ve been at this all day.”

Stiles looked back down at the book he hadn’t been digesting.  He sighed and slipped a bookmark between its pages. 

“What are you hoping to find, anyway?” Derek asked.

Stiles stood, making a non-committal hum as he arched his back, popping a few things into place.  “A way to stop something bad from happening.  A way home.  A reason I’m here other than using magic while drunk.”  He stood straight before turning to Derek.  “I’m a fuck up, Derek.  Your lives, they’re so different, you’re all so happy and together and _alive_.  I don’t want to ruin that.  I can’t ruin things twice.”

“I doubt anything over there was your fault.  Scott surviving the bite was a game of chance.”

Stiles didn’t look at Derek as he passed the alpha and stepped out of the den.  “You have no idea what I’ve done.”

“You could tell me,” Derek offered.  “You could let someone here understand.”

Stiles shook his head and looked back.  The light of the den only illuminated half of Derek’s face.  Stiles had always found Derek beautiful.  He was a walking sexual awakening for a sixteen year old Stiles Stilinski.  Here, in the dead of night, older, tired, looking at Stiles without all the layers of defense and sarcasm they always shot at each other, Stiles saw the Derek that OS fell in love with.  He was more than beautiful.  He was real.  Real in a way that all of Stiles’s teenage fantasies and adult bitterness had never let Derek fully be in his mind before. 

“It’s better if you don’t,” Stiles said.

“Because it will hurt us, or you,” Derek said bluntly.

Stiles turned away.  “Because it won’t _help_ anything,” he whispered into the dark hallway.  He headed to the stairs without looking back.  Stiles was used to dealing with his burdens on his own.  He could last until he was back in a world where no one wanted to help carry them.  As he crawled into bed, he ignored the realization that he was afraid.  If he asked for help here, he might not be strong enough to hold everything up on his own when he went back.

Stiles woke up late.  Fitful sleep and the impression of nightmares clouded his consciousness for a long while after his eyes opened.  Finally, he was able to roll out of bed and throw some clothes on before heading downstairs to grab breakfast.  Lunch?  Whatever. 

OS was out for the day already, as Malia so helpfully informed him.  “He doesn’t like you,” Malia said, blowing hair out of her face.  He was tempted to suggest she cut it.  Malia had enjoyed her short hair.  “Which doesn’t make sense.  You’re him?”

“Only technically,” Stiles murmured. 

“I like you both just fine,” Malia said, smushing her cheek into the palm of her hand as she rested her elbow against the counter.  “Why are you sad though?”

Stiles grabbed his toast and opened the popped open the lid on the butter spread.  “I’m not sad,” he explained, “I’m just not happy.”

Malia looked him over carefully, those wide eyes he remembered from their youth: searching without judgement.  Her understanding of the laws of the wild always gave her a keener perception of how people were feeling, even if she couldn’t always grasp why.

“No,” she said.  “You’re sad.  Sometimes you smell like a wounded animal, ready to lash out at anyone who comes to close.  Other times you smell like the kit that got lost.  You’re not alone, here.   You don’t have to feel alone.”

Stiles felt his frown lessen, eyes soften.  Her viewpoint was so simple and so far off.  “I was alone back home.  I’m alone here.  I’m not supposed to be here.  I’ll never be a part of this pack.”

“Why?”

“I know no one believes me, but I’m telling you, nothing good can come from meeting your double.  Forget staying in the same place.”

Malia shook her head.  “No.  You’re pushing us away for other reasons.”

Stiles ignored her, sitting at the bar with his toast and biting angrily into the half burnt bread. 

“Is it because they’re together?”

Stiles nearly choked.  He coughed a few times, hitting his chest.  Malia waited patiently until Stiles was able to speak again. 

“It is a bit surreal, yeah.  But the, the knowledge that Derek in another lifetime could have fallen in love with me isn’t, it doesn’t.  It doesn’t _change_ anything.  It doesn’t make my life any different or this world’s Derek and Stiles.  I – I’m not.  It’s not that I…” Stiles trailed off trying to gather his thoughts.  “No.  To answer your question.  No.  I’m not doing or not-doing anything because they’re together.  The fact of the matter is I need to understand the extent to which my being here will fuck things up.  And until I learn that, I should keep my distance.  And either way, even if we learn the overlap of our existence isn’t fucking with the universe, I still have to find a way _back_.  So, what’s the point, Malia?  Why should I bother to do anything but my own work?”

He hadn’t meant to snap at her like that.  Despite how little he ate, Stiles lost his appetite, toast going cold on the counter.  Malia kept her wide eyes locked on him, a persistent frown on her lips.  It felt like familiar territory.  Another one of their many fights.  Another reason to curse the other.  Another heartbreak with the promise of it being the last time.

“You’re scared,” Malia said, baffled.  “You’re pushing us away because you’re scared.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Stiles said, abandoning his attempt at a meal.  He shoved past Malia towards the living to go look for Isaac.  “The laws of magic should be begging for sacrifice.  You don’t just accidentally jump a time stream without there being consequences.”

Malia didn’t follow, which he was thankful for.  Stiles _was_ scared.  He was terrified he was going to fuck things up.  He was nervous about letting things get too out of hand while he was stuck here.  He was worried there wasn’t a way to get him back to the point of reality that he belonged. 

Isaac was on his laptop working in the living room.  Stiles was thankful the tall asshole had taken to doing his work at the house instead of his own apartment.  He didn’t really care that it felt like he was being baby sat, Stiles needed someone that didn’t freak him out to converse with.  Between half the back being brought back from the dead, dealing with _himself_ , and Derek being way to nice for the dynamic Stiles would find comforting, Isaac really was a lifesaver. 

Stiles almost dared to call him a friend at this point.  But he wouldn’t. 

“Can you bring me to Deaton’s?”

Isaac looked at the clock on his laptop.  “Yeah, sure.  They close in like four hours.” 

Stiles groaned.  He needed to get out of the house.  Being cooped up was driving him nuts.  It didn’t matter, Stiles guessed.  He had more research to do.  Maybe there’d be answers in the next book he picked up.  He needed to read more about Ley Lines to maybe find a way home.     


	5. potential energy

Stiles chewed at his thumb nail as they waited for Deaton to pull out all of the ingredients.  Every once in a while he compulsively straightened out the items on the metal table.  His mind wasn’t focused and he was trying everything he could to bring it back to the moment.

Researching earlier had led him to a book in OS’s collection that gave Stiles pause.  Deaton was right. Not about him not being a Double Walker, Stiles was sure of that. But there might have been more weight to his initial comment about ley lines that Stiles had dismissed.  He remembered the story about the Knight who stepped into a fairy ring well enough that Deaton’s claims felt off base.  He had crossed ley lines, yes, and he found his own dwelling and not some unrecognizable universe, but his presence hadn’t been hollowed.  He shouldn’t be needing to look for something to fix or _make amends_ or whatever bullshit.  But then he came across the little blue book of fey and now he wasn’t so sure.

Stiles rubbed at his shoulder.  He’d need Derek to take a look at it to confirm his theory.  If he crossed the ley lines because of a fairy ring, a fairy _bite_ , then his being here is intrinsically linked to the magical currents. 

Magic… magic _knew_ what it was doing.  There was a reason druids had to make bargains and sacrifices.  Magic had a will of its own, in a way.  The book he had read talked mostly of why fey took humans.  The guy from the club didn’t do this.  Stiles shuddered at what possible reason he had _intended_ Stiles for.  But, because of Stiles’s spark kicking back against the fey’s magic, it had to have acted as a closed circuit of energy, spiraling out of control and knocking them through the ley lines.  The fairy would have just… gone home. 

Stiles was brought to someplace the magic thought he should be, if not his own realm.  Whether it was for short or long term, Stiles couldn’t figure.

Of course, all of this was speculative on if the creature had in fact been a fairy that bit Stiles. 

Isaac placed a hand on his shoulder and Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin. 

Deaton had placed the last of the ingredients on the table and they were both looking at Stiles expectantly.  “Your nerves aren’t placing much confidence in me that you can do this,” Deaton remarked. 

Stiles rolled his eyes.  “I’m not nervous about _this_.”  He wasn’t.  What he couldn’t figure out was, if the magic had sent him _here_ , why would the magic want or need a doppelgänger?  What was he being punished for?  Stiles frowned and began to pull ingredients.  His hands were steady and eyes cold.  His brain had raised a stupid question.  Of course he was being punished.  Stiles had a lot to atone for.

He sliced his palm and let his blood turn the powder he’d created into a paste.  Now it was a matter of sparking everything _but_ his blood, that was already so full of his life energy.  It was as simple as –

Stiles fell backwards, convulsing as his muscles seized and his airways constricted.  He heard his name being called like a distant hum and the overhead lights blinded him to the motion around him.  It didn’t hurt, at least.  His body jerked on its own, fighting the backfire.  His skin tingled in a familiar way and the smell of burnt flesh hit his nostrils.  He was electrocuting himself.

Strong hands grabbed his jaw and forced his mouth open.  A blur eclipsed the fluorescents and something dense and hard was being shoved into his mouth.  The hands around his jaw slammed it shut, teeth clacking together.  His nose was pinched, forcing his throat open long enough to swallow.

Then nothing.  For a brief moment, Stiles wondered if this was what death was like.  Then he was jack-rabbiting up to a seated position, having collapsed to the floor at some point, and gasping for air.  His vision blacked out in spots, but soon cleared as his breathing regulated.  He coughed, throat raw from whatever it was they made him swallow. 

The ringing in his ears was the last to fade and he could finally hear Isaac yelling at him.  Deaton’s stern face of disappointment was a silent beratement at least. 

“Bezoar?” Stiles rasped out, cutting off Isaac’s tirade.  Deaton nodded.  “Gross.”

“Gross!” Isaac snapped.  “You nearly died!”

Stiles coughed a few times and forced himself to his feet.  “Yeah, well.  That shouldn’t have happened.”  He looked down at his hands.  The skin of his finger tips and palms, reaching up around his wrists and forearms were speckled with pock marks, small burns bubbling up, some worse than other.  “This never happened before.”  He flexed his fingers and hissed at the sting.  “You got any burn cream?”

Deaton sighed but went over to his vet supplies, coming back with some Aquaphor and gauze wrap.  “This was a dangerous risk, Stiles.”

“Nik,” Stiles reminded Deaton.

“Nik,” Deaton repeated.  “Have you been experiencing difficulty using your spark before now?”  He tugged at Stiles’s hands and started applying ointment. 

Stiles sighed and relayed the handful of times he’d let out a magical discharge without meaning to.  “I’ve never had control issues like this.  It has to be because I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Has our Stiles experienced anything similar?”

Stiles shrugged.  “He’s never even really used his spark before.”

Deaton hummed.  “That could mean if he loses control it will be all the more dangerous.”

Stiles looked over at the paste still sitting in the mortar.  “Hey, Isaac, can you check if that works?”

“How?” Isaac asked, eying the paste with suspicion. 

“Take a small spoonful.  Put it on the plant.” 

There was a small potted flower on the corner of the table that hadn’t been used in making the item.  Isaac did as instructed.  Instantly, the flower decayed as if the roots had rotted.

“Jesus,” Isaac whispered.  “ _This_ is what you’re giving some stranger on the internet?”

Stiles shrugged.  “Yeah.”

By the time they made it back to the house, Derek was waiting outside like a distressed parent ready to scold their child for missing curfew.  OS was rolled up next to the window, an unreadable expression through the glass. 

“Deaton called,” Derek started out.  “Your father’s on his way.”

Stiles bit back a retort about John not being his father.  It wouldn’t have mattered if he spoke up anyway, Derek was on a roll.

“I understand that you’re doing this to get Cora’s information, because we could have probably found another way to secure your identification, but Jesus Christ, you’re behaving worse than when I first met you.  Reckless and _stupid_.  You could have died making that whatever it is.”  Derek eyed up the bandages wrapped around Stiles’s arms.  “You hurt yourself.”

Stiles snorted.  “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal!”

Stiles had _never_ seen Derek this animated before.  Even with his grand speeches, his rage fueled scoldings, his sarcastic banter, Derek liked to remain stoic and bitter.  This was something else.  This was the fear of losing a loved one, not just someone he felt vaguely responsible for.  Derek was treating him like OS, not like Nik, and it was pissing Stiles off.

“Does it matter!” Stiles snapped, cutting off the rest of Derek’s rant.  “Does it _really_ matter if I died?  It would solve all your problems right now.  There would be no double.  No magic interference, no cause to worry about _your own_ Stiles.  And I made the epoxy, by the way.  It works, and Deaton dropped it at the post office so you’ll be learning about Cora in the next couple of days, so you’re fucking welcome.”

Derek stood there, stunned.  Isaac shifted his weight awkwardly next to Stiles, uncomfortable with the situation but unwilling to speak up.  OS in the window rolled away, only to emerge in the doorframe a few moments later.

“You don’t care,” Derek said, taking in what Stiles said.  “You really don’t care if you die?”

Stiles shrugged helplessly.  “It’s not like I have anything to live for,” he admitted darkly.  “Not here, and not in my own life.  I’m only alive because human nature wants to exist and despite all my neuroses I’m not suicidal.”  He scrubbed at his eyes.  “I need a drink.”

“Stiles,” Derek started, reaching out as Stiles made to enter the house. 

“Don’t touch me,” he snapped.  “Please tell me there’s whiskey in the house,” he directed that to OS, the only one who lived there that would want to drink alcohol. 

“The globe in the study is a bar,” OS said hollowly, wheeling backwards to give Stiles enough space to pass.  His double tracked him, a new weight to the gaze than Stiles had felt before.  A thread of electricity wound itself around his wrists and Stiles had to take a deep breath and force his spark down.  It stung, under his skin, waiting to cause destruction.

Perhaps now wasn’t the best time to get drunk, but Derek was right about one thing.  Deaton, too.  He was reckless.  If his magic was kicking back on him, and getting worse, what else could happen?  He shouldn’t be taking risks with this, with them, but god was it hard to hold it in.

Stiles found the whiskey and slammed back a double shot.  He needed to ask Derek to take a look at the possible bite on his neck, but that would involve talking to Derek, and right now Stiles wasn’t fit to talk to anyone.  He was halfway to drunk by the time the Sheriff stepped in and carefully tugged the bottle away from him.  The whiskey he drank would be hitting him hard in a few minutes once it caught up to his system. 

“Hey, kiddo.  Looks like you got your liver from me.”

Stiles’s head slumped, eyes bleary and emotions frayed.  “I drank your whole liquor cabinet a few years back.  I can’t believe the other me drinks this shit,” he mumbled, glaring at the bottle of Jack.  “You’ve got taste.  Johnnie Walker.  Classy.”

“You drank all of my whiskey?” John chuckled.  “And I _let_ you?”

Stiles shook his head.  “You didn’t have a way to protest anymore.”

He caught John’s frown and his stomach rolled.  Whether it was from the whiskey with no food or the guilt and grief, Stiles couldn’t be sure. 

“Let’s get you some water, okay kid?” John said, softer this time.  He rubbed Stiles’s back gently and Stiles sighed into the touch.  Someone else  must have brought the water in, or maybe John had it with him all along, because he didn’t leave before pressing a cool glass to Stiles’s lips.  “What happened to you?” John whispered. 

 _Death_ , Stiles thought _, lots of death._ He pushed himself to standing, head still clear enough that walking wasn’t going to be a problem.  Stiles judged he had another ten minutes or so before the sheer amount of whiskey he drank caught up to his system. 

“You need to stop treating me like I’m your son,” Stiles slurred.  “It’s not fair.” Then he walked out of the den and made his way to his room.  It wasn’t even seven o’clock, but Stiles was going to puke, sit in the shower, and then pass out. 

He was sitting on the bathroom floor, feeling a little better after a purge, when the door creaked open.  It took a minute to register why it was so out of place to see OS sitting in his wheelchair. 

“How’d you get up here?” Stiles asked, tasting his mouth as he talked.  He cringed and aired out his tongue.  He needed water.

“Made Derek carry me.  He’s quite useful like that.”

Stiles snorted and pushed himself to standing so he could turn the sink faucet on.  “ _Why_ are you up here?” Stiles tried this time.

OS stared at him as Stiles drank water with his hands.  “I need to know,” he said eventually.  Before Stiles could ask what OS was talking about, the other him spoke up with a clipped, low voice.  “What happened to me that I could ever turn out like _you_.”

Stiles gripped the edge of the sink, knuckles flushed white with the effort.  “Why does it matter?” Stiles asked. 

The world between them stretched thin, static energy buzzing in the air like the wrong breath could set off an explosion.  Stiles hoped it was just the alcohol. 

“Because despite it all, we _are_ the same person, and if you could fall this low then I run the same risk,” OS grit out, angry at himself for having to admit that.

Stiles had to laugh, the residual acidic bile stinging his nose.  “I think you’re fine.”

“ _Stiles_ ,” OS snapped, using their shared name instead of the nicknames they had dubbed each other.  “Tell me.” 

Stiles looked him over.  He seemed different than Stiles had ever seen before.  Weak for the first time in his double’s presence.  “Listen, I have enough problems,” Stiles said.  “I don’t want to deal with you worrying about me or your friends in a universe you can’t help.”

“Tell me,” OS repeated. 

He was blocking the bathroom door completely and Stiles wouldn’t be able to get out.  Stiles contemplated continuing with his plans for the evening and just passing out in the shower instead of a bed, but he had a feeling OS wouldn’t let him get away with that. 

“You lost Scott,” Stiles started.  “I lost just about everybody else.  Erica.  Boyd.  Heather.  Allison.  Dad.”

OS’s breath hitched.  His hands mindlessly adjusted their grip on the wheels of his chair.

“And I don’t _have_ Derek.  He’s in love with some bounty hunter.  We were never even really friends.  Isaac fucked off to France when we were sixteen.  Malia’s fucked up because of me.  Scott and I don’t talk anymore.  So many people died, do you get that?  Not even ones I knew or were friends with.  Just more and more people.  Kids at school.  Cops.  Hospital staff.  We didn’t stop Jennifer until she was on her last knot, about to kill Melissa, Chris, and dad.  Kate and Peter didn’t stay dead, and that lead to a lot of problems.  _I killed someone_.”

Stiles wasn’t sure what the other him was looking at, what OS could see in Stiles’s eyes at that moment in time.  But Stiles recognized the expression on his duplicate.  The face he was so familiar with still felt eerie and wrong to watch when it wasn’t a mirror, moving in synch.  Yet Stiles could still read the horror in those amber eyes like all the times Stiles found himself staring at his reflection, wondering if there was ever a way back from the person he had become.

“Do you get it yet,” Stiles choked out.  His throat constricted as he held back the wash of emotion this conversation was pulling from him.  “You had some sad stuff happen to you.  You lost your mom and your best friend, but you were young and you learned to cope and you made some new friends, found a new family.  You have everything you could ever need.  Sad things happen to everyone.  I’m not _Sad-Stiles_ ,” he bit out, no matter how appropriate Malia’s moniker for him was.  “I’m you, when everything is stripped away and you’re pushed to your breaking point over and over and over again and forced to do things that will haunt you for the rest of your life.  Do you get that?”

He wasn’t sure when he had gotten so close to his other self, but he loomed over OS now.  He steadied himself on the arms of OS’s wheelchair and took a deep breath.  His hands crackled.  OS pressed his palm against Stiles’s chest.  A jolt passed through them and they both jerked back.  Stiles felt utterly too sober now.  He ran a hand over his face and leaned back against the sink counter. 

“You’re getting married,” he whispered, “to someone who loves you.  Let that be enough.”

“I was right,” OS said, eyes flicking over Stiles’s face in a frantic, half-seeing way.  Stiles frowned.  That look was reserved for putting puzzles together and Stiles couldn’t figure out what OS was so sure about.

“About being a fucking dumbass?  Congratulations.”

“You’re jealous.”

Stiles huffed out a dry laugh and gave OS a dark look.  “So were you.”  He hadn’t missed the anger about taking their dad’s attention, or the bitterness about not being able to do magic, or the way OS’s gaze sometimes lingered on Stiles’s legs as if he might actually trade everything he had just to walk again.  It looked like OS was cured of that wish now. 

OS leaned forward, earnest in a new way that Stiles had yet to see.  “I said before that I couldn’t believe there was a universe where Derek and I aren’t together.  Well maybe you and your Derek aren’t together, but you do love him.”

Stiles scoffed, flustered with the sudden accusation.  “Um.  No.”

“It’s there,” OS said, gently, like he was speaking with a child now.  “Coloring all your words and actions, betraying how strongly you feel about him, even if you haven’t admitted it to yourself.”  He looked sad about that. 

Stiles shook his head.  He had been thinking about it a lot, of course.  How could he ignore the elephant in the room.  There was a universe where Stiles and Derek were in love and he was witness to it.  Sometimes, when he was in the den surrounded by all those books, he’d not be able to pay attention to any of it, mind taking him to all his past interactions with Derek.  The vet clinic.  The pool.  The station.  The loft.  Mexico.  A young Derek who wasn’t yet burdened by the loss of his family, a human Derek who had to learn to be vulnerable.  There was so much between them.  He’d spent so much time with Derek, trying to find Erica and Boyd, trying to find the Darach… Stiles vaguely remembered coming after him as the nogitsune and how Derek wouldn’t let Chris shoot him.  There was so much… potential between them.  Built up energy snowballing together, but it only managed to push them apart in the end.

“I see it,” Stiles admitted.  “I get how it would have happened with you two, starting your relationship from a place of mutual loss, building each other up.  But we weren’t like that.  We were at each other’s throats from day one because,” Stiles let out a dry laugh, “because Scott didn’t like him.  We,” Stiles shrugged again, looking away from OS, “we saved each other’s lives a lot over the years, but that doesn’t mean I love him.  And it sure as fuck doesn’t mean he loves me.”

He pushed himself to standing and motioned for OS to get out of the doorway.  It took a lot of willpower, but Stiles forced himself to meet his eye. 

“Maybe that’s the truth of it.  There’s a potential between us in every universe by the simple factor of who we are, but that doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t acted upon.  Your Derek’s happy.  My Derek’s happy.  Let’s leave it at that and let me be the pathetic excuse of a human that I am.”

He stood there until OS relented, wheeling back into the bedroom.  Stiles watched from the bathroom door as OS wheeled to the hall and called for Derek to bring him back down stairs.  When Derek came up to lift OS and his chair, he looked Stiles’s way, eyes catching for a too long beat.

Stiles wondered briefly how much of that Derek heard.


	6. converge

An email had come in by the time Stiles woke up from his whiskey binge.  C:Brex had found Cora.  She was alive and well and coming to the wedding.  Derek was in a state of euphoric shock.  He had a sister again.  His family just kept growing. 

It made Stiles ache for his own Derek, living out of the loft where he gutted his own pack member and still haunted by the ghosts of everyone who he’d lost, everyone who left him.  The puddle of glue he was touching bubbled up and exploded in a two-foot radius.  He sighed.  Theses bursts of energy were becoming more frequent and even OS was starting to feel static shock more often than a normal human would ever expect to. 

“Nice one,” Isaac snorted, his own hands coated in a thick layer of goop.  The barbeque night had turned into a decoration committee and everyone was helping out making things.  OS was a bit frantic thinking of all the DIY pintrest ideas they hadn’t even started on yet.

Allison and Erica were making place cards at a different table, giving him strange looks and whispering while Malia helped Boyd at the grill.  Stiles wasn’t even sure what OS and Derek were doing, but it looked mostly like a contained panic attack.  Stiles sighed and grabbed a rag to wipe up the mess.  “This is stupid,” he said. 

“What, I kinda like the string lanterns,” Issac said.  Together they had a row of fifteen balloons wrapped in paper mache string that would harden so they could hang them with fairy lights. 

“I’m wasting my time,” Stiles said, giving Isaac a stern look.  He knew what Stiles meant.  “I still have books to read and I didn’t get anything done the last two days.”

“Well that’s your fault for hiding in your room like a five year old,” Isaac laughed.  “They’re worried about you, you know.”  He jerked his head towards Allison and Erica, the latter giving Isaac an incredulous look that Isaac didn’t bother turning to see.  “Keep talking about what you said to Derek the other night and if you maybe need to get sober.”

“What’s it to them?” Stiles frowned. 

“I know you don’t feel this way, but you’re pretty much pack,” Isaac stated, like Stiles was being dense on purpose.

Stiles laughed, a hollow sound.  “They don’t even like me.”

“They like you just fine,” Isaac shook his head.  “You’re the one keeping your distance.  They didn’t trust you at first, for obvious reasons.  It took a while to come to terms with the idea you really are what you said you were and not something trying to trick us.  But they like Stiles, so they like you.”

“That’s stupid.  They don’t even know me,” Stiles protested. 

Isaac sighed and added another goopy balloon to the line-up.  “You’re trying to hard to find a solution so that you can help us, right?  So that nothing bad happens because of the whole doppelgänger thing?”

“Yeah?”

“Because you _care_ about us.  Even though you technically don’t know us.”

Stiles chewed at his bottom lip, knowing Isaac caught him.  It was still stupid.  “I just don’t want any more guilt to weigh on my conscious.  Don’t take it so personally.”

Isaac chuckled.  “Whatever you say, dude.  But I’ve got your number.”

“Who’s all coming to this thing anyway, besides,” he motioned out to the pack, “the obvious.”

“Well, Cora, which is mind blowing.  Your dad and Melissa.  Uh, Stiles invited some friends from college and some of the teachers from work.  Some of the deputies.  Allison’s bringing a plus one, but she won’t tell us who.  She’s being a real brat about it.”

“BITE ME,” Allison yelled from the other table, a laugh in her voice.  Erica must be feeding her their conversation.

Isaac chuckled.  “Chris and Victoria.  Um,” he scratched his cheek.  “Deaton.  A couple of Derek’s employees from the bar who he’s friends with.  I think that’s it.”

It was more people than Stiles had been expecting.  It was easy to forget these people weren’t just pack, they had a life, friends, coworkers, family.  Stiles had spent so long alone.  Regardless of his broken relationship with Scott, Stiles didn’t think he could call anyone he went to college or grad school friends.  He’d pushed everyone aside. 

Before Stiles could sit on the mounting self-loathing too long, Boyd called them over for dinner.  They migrated to the one table free of arts and crafts.  Erica punched Isaac’s shoulder as they sat down next to each other and Stiles thought maybe not so much had changed since high school. 

Malia brought plates a giant plate of burgers and there was already a bunch of sides on the table.  Before Stiles could pick up a paper plate to serve himself, Boyd came around and placed a full plate in front of him.  Stiles frowned at the two burgers and heaping piles of potato salad and grilled veggies.  Boyd took the seat next to him and quirked an eyebrow, a master even to Derek of the silent judgement. 

“You look emaciated, dude,” Boyd said. 

He’d been eating better since showing up in this timeline.  The pack always had a lot of food readily available.  But he still fell back into bad habits when left on his own: getting too absorbed in work to get up and feed himself. 

OS was almost chubby compared to him.  The year in a chair probably added to that factor, but it was clear between the two of them that Stiles wasn’t supposed to be this skinny.  He sighed and grabbed one of the burgers on his plate.  “Thanks,” he muttered before taking a bite.  It was exceptionally good, but Boyd’s cooking always was.

“I made the potato salad,” Malia grinned, sitting across from him. 

Stiles smiled and took a spoonful.  Probably her best job following a recipe yet.  “It’s good.  Thanks.”

“So, Nik,” Erica started pointedly.  “What, uh, do – did I mean, you do for work?  I feel like you haven’t told us much of anything.”

Stiles shrugged, picking at his food.  “I made my way through grad school working at a café, and then making stuff for people that wanted like, magic amulets or whatever.  Most of the time you could just put a charm on a piece of junk to make it tingle when you touched it and they were satisfied customers.”

“You scammed people?” Allison scoffed.

“I made sure I wasn’t giving dangerous magic to idiots who couldn’t tell the difference.”

“And your hacker friend you almost died for?” Erica challenged.

“He can tell the difference.  I’m not worried about him.” 

“Idiot,” she muttered, going back to her food.  He didn’t know if she was upset about him giving the epoxy to C:Breax or making it at all, but he wasn’t going to continue the subject if he could help it.

“What else do you guys need to get done?” Isaac asked Derek and OS, thankfully cutting off the questioning.

“Most of it is just picking up all the chairs and setting up everything at this point,” OS said, biting at his thumb.  “I’m just in a constant state of panic at this point.  I’m not used to having things done early.  Or at all.  Most things are just a hot mess and we default with whatever is around.”

Stiles snorted.  Sounded like his life. 

Derek stood up from the table and Stiles tracked his movements as he walked around the house.  A few moments later he came back with the Sheriff, still in uniform and looking grim.  He cheered at the sight of the pack at the table, but Stiles could easily note how tired John was. 

“Hey kiddo,” John said was he walked over, giving OS an affectionate hair rub.  OS re shaped his hair in annoyance.  “Sorry I’m late.”

“It’s okay,” OS said.  “Catch any bad guys?”

“Yeah.”  He ran a tired hand over his face.  “I won’t stay long, I’m about ready to pass out, but we finally got enough on that crack pot at Eichen to bring him in.  Thanks for the tips, Nik.” 

John had paused a half second before saying the name, and Stiles wondered how well everyone was dealing with that adjustment.  All of them had been pretty good at calling him by Nik, except for Deaton but Stiles thought that was deliberate on the vet’s part.  Still, the name was still a weird stall on their tongues, unwilling for a moment to process Stiles as something _other_.  There was a power in names, something Stiles wasn’t foolish enough to ignore.  It was interesting that the given name they shared was the part Stiles went by in the universe, and it was the one that didn’t fit either of them.

Stiles gave John a tight smile and took another bite of food.  He thought back to Isaac’s accusation, that he tried to help because he cared about strangers for the mere fact they shared faces.  When he got the run down of everything that had happened in this line of events, he immediately compiled a list of all the things he could fix.  And he wasn’t even thinking of Deaton’s claim to the ley lines story at the time. 

He supposed maybe it wasn’t so far fetched that these strangers wanted to take care of him, also. 

“Oh!  We should all go out to the lake!” Erica cheered sometime later as their plates started to stay empty. 

“You always say that,” Boyd sighed, but he looked at Erica fondly. 

“And I always mean it,” Erica beamed.

OS wheeled backwards so he could maneuver around the table.  “Come on,” he sighed, “we all know she won’t let up.”

John begged off before they made their way into the woods.  He clapped Stiles on the shoulder as he said goodbye, parting words about the case at Eichen.  He was worried about how Stiles knew the information.  Stiles didn’t offer anything.  “Maybe later.”

Stiles tried to turn in also, but Erica grabbed his wrist and insisted.  None of them had been leaving him alone too long since he came back from Deaton’s the other day.  Even when he holed up in his room, someone came knocking ever other hour.  He let Erica drag him towards the lake, but insisted he’d just sit on the sidelines.

“I’m occasionally electrocuting the things I touch.  I should probably stay out of the water,” he told them. 

“You wanna go swimming?” Derek asked OS. 

OS looked over to where Stiles was settling onto a patch of grass and shook his head.  “Maybe in a bit.”  He wheeled over and Stiles sucked in a big breath.  Stiles could feel the lecture coming, although he couldn’t imagine what it would be about.  “I’m not sure I like you,” OS said, “but you’re me, and now that I’ve had time to think about what you’ve told me.”  He shrugged.  “If I went through those things, I probably would be a lot like you.”

“No shit,” Stiles huffed.  “Was that a, what, apology?”

OS shook his head.  “I’m just saying I’m bothering to try and understand you now.”

“How generous.” 

They were quiet for a bit, watching the pack strip their outer layers and jump into the pond.  Only Allison and Boyd had bothered to change into proper bathing suits.  Even Derek yanked off his shirt and pushed his pants down without a care.  Stiles tilted his head to get a better look.

“You know, maybe you’re right.  I _am_ jealous of myself.  Hot damn.”

Derek tensed a little bit, but when he looked back he was blushing as red as a tomato, giving OS a flustered look.  Stiles started laughing, and OS joined pretty quickly.  Annoying Derek was at least a shared pastime they could enjoy, apparently. 

When their laughter died down, OS leaned over the wheel of his chair to get closer to Stiles’s face.  “You’re using humor to cover up how distressed you are.  I recognize that laugh.”

Stiles rolled his eyes.  He really was his own worst enemy.  They’re almost getting along. 

He scratched at his neck, a subconscious itch he still hadn’t gotten Derek to look at.  He looked over to where the alpha was splashing in the water with his pack.  It felt like such a precious sight.  Stiles was afraid, every time they got near each other, that he was going to ruin that.  He didn’t know how to ask anything of this version of Derek.

Stiles sighed and got to his feet.  “As thrilling as this is, I think I’m going to turn in.”  He could hear OS’s protest before it even left his mouth.  “I’m not going to do anything stupid if you leave me alone while you guy howl under the full moon.”  He almost went to clap OS on the shoulder, a familiar habit he’d picked up from their dad, but stopped himself mid motion.  It wouldn’t do well for another shock.  He pulled his hand in and winced.  “I’ll see you later.”

The walk back to the house wasn’t particularly long or difficult to find, but Stiles paid closer attention to his feet over the twisted roots and scattered rocks than where he was going.  He’d somehow taken a wrong turn.  When the trees cleared and Stiles looked up, he hadn’t made his way to the Hale House Backyard, but rather an all too familiar clearing in the woods that perhaps he should have paid a visit to sooner.

This must be what Lydia feels like, when she shows up at crime scenes on her way to the mall.

The nemeton looked just as Stiles remembered it.  Giant.  Sometimes Stiles thought of the tree that must have stood there, towering over the rest of the forest.  The rings of the stump counted into the thousands.  It was a shame such a thing had to be taken down.  Even though the power of the crossing ley lines remained, it must have been something else in its glory days.

He ran his fingers against the grain of the rings and frowned.  The wood felt rough and brittle almost.  The power of it was hallow.  Dead.  It wasn’t like his own nemeton, brimming with energy, calling for the supernatural to feed it like that weird plant musical with the guy from _Honey I Shrunk the Kids_.  This one was still clinging onto the last blood spilled here, enough to keep it alive, but not enough to let it thrive.  Jennifer Blake didn’t make her sacrifices in this line, at least, not enough of them.  And they hadn’t woken it up, not proper.  Or, perhaps what they had done wasn’t proper, but it woke up.  Fully.  A new life.

This was the old nemeton.  A dying relic.

Stiles frowned, running his fingers along the many layered rings.  The nogitsune should still be trapped between its roots.  He’d warned them about it.  It was on the list.  An explanation of how a fox could not also be a wolf, yada yada, semantics are actually really important in old folklore apparently.

He felt that familiar tingle under his skin meaning a wolf was approaching. 

“Stiles?”

Derek stepped into the clearing, wearing pants again, although he was sans everything else.  “We were about to start our run, but we noticed you weren’t back at the house.”

Stiles cleared his throat and looked up at the moon shining through the canopy.  “Yeah, sorry.  Have a lot on my mind.”  He rubbed at his shoulder and cringed.  Now was a good a time as any.  “Hey, quick question.”  Stiles had Derek flash his eyes and get a good look at the point where his neck met his shoulder.

“It looks like a bite,” Derek confirmed, “although I don’t recognize the pattern.” 

Stiles sighed and sat down on the tree stump.  “It’s fine.  I know what it is.  Not many creatures can bite and leave a mark only visible to eyes as sensitive as yours.”

“Sensitive?” Derek asked, smirking.  “What does it mean?”

Stiles had divulged on day one that he had been bitten by _something_ before being sent to this line of events.  Evidence of what had bit him had to mean something.  He stared up at the moon, a perfect circle in the sky.

 “There’s a quote, from a story.  It’s pretty famous among scholars like myself and Deaton.  _If the ley lines you should follow, and your dwelling at the end, and find your presence has been hollowed, your hereafter is to make amends.”_

“And what does _that_ mean?” Derek asked, taking a seat next to Stiles on the old stump.

Stiles wondered if this Derek knew the significance of the area.  His mother had yanked the memories of the location out of him.  He must remember killing Paige, on some level, but not of the actual root cellar.  Stiles decided it was best not to ask.

“It means,” Stiles sighed, “that maybe it’s both ways.  Just because I’m a doppelgänger doesn’t mean _my_ presence hasn’t been… hollowed somehow.  I’ve lost my place in this universe.  Maybe in both.  Which means there might be something I’m supposed to fix.”

Stiles neglected to mention the way he discovered of potentially going home, using the ley lines as his own personal highway.  He’d accidentally created a closed circuit of magic when he reacted to the fairy bite.  He could do the same again under the right circumstances.  The right ring of magic, the right spark.  He traced the lines on the tree stump. 

The nemeton may be weaker in this universe than his own, but it was still a cluster of ley lines.

The fey didn’t hop universes.  They lived in a different plane of existence than human kind, but they were still linked to one earth, one reality and set of events.  The ley lines were the only thing that crossed so many boundaries, it would appear.  The bite might actually be a good thing, a tether of his own line of events so he didn’t end up in some third alternate universe where everything was a different shade of wrong. 

Stiles looked over to Derek.  The alpha was staring at him like some strange memory he couldn’t quite place. 

“Is it weird?” Stiles asked, when the silence that stretched between them felt too suffocating.  “Having me here?  A version of your fiancé who you don’t love.”

Derek smiled softly, eyes still stuck on Stiles’s face, taking in all the differences.  “Of course it’s weird.  You’re both so different and yet so the same.  But it, I don’t know,” Derek shrugged, smile broadening although still soft and private.  “It gives me confidence in the years to come.  I love Stiles so much.”

It hurt, a little, to hear Derek say that.  To hear him say it and know it wasn’t meant about _him_.  To know, back in his own line, Derek never thought of him that way.  That _Stiles_ never thought of Derek that way.  Not really.  It hurt, and it was stupid.

“Meeting you,” Derek continued, oblivious or ignoring Stiles’s inner turmoil, “I know that no matter what the two of us go through, I’ll always love him.”

Stiles frowned, trying to understand.

Derek shook his head, perhaps a bit amused at Stiles’s cluelessness.  “If we had to face the types of things you have,” he explained, “and turned into versions of ourselves we wouldn’t recognize today, I know I would still _want_ to know him, like the way I want to know you.  It’s not about sex or love, it’s about commitment.  And we all change, we all grow.  Whether the future holds something good or something dark, no matter how I change, not matter how _he_ changes, I’ll want to continue to learn him and stay by his side.”

Stiles felt his molars grind together, his jaw was clenched so tight.  His throat was raw and breath shallow.  There was no way Derek was missing the effect his words had on him.  “Didn't realize you were practicing your vows.  That’s some sappy shit right there.”

“I’m sorry I can’t love you the way I love Stiles,” Derek whispered. 

“Don’t be,” Stiles said, forced loftiness in his voice.  “He’s the one you went through everything with, after all.  And you don’t even know me.”

“But you do deserve to be loved,” Derek said.  His words held such conviction it took Stiles’s breath all over again.  “I wish the other me could see that, too.”

“He’s happy,” Stiles choked out.  “I’ve only ever wanted him to be happy.”  Stiles hadn’t realized how true those words were until he said them out loud.  Even in the early days, he had been trying to protect Derek.  Even when Stiles was still afraid, still skeptical, still angry… he wanted to make sure Derek was able to get better.  “That’s all I can ask for.”

Some of the pack howled in the distance.  They weren’t too far off.  Maybe back at the lake.

“Do you want me to walk you back to the house?” Derek asked.

Stiles shook his head.  “You go run, enjoy your last full moon before you become a married man.”  He smirked like it was some big joke, although he couldn’t figure out the punch line.  “I’ll be fine.”

He stood and walked back to the thick of the trees and refused to look back.  Behind him, Derek howled.

When he finally reached the house, OS and Allison were waiting for him with mugs of hot chocolate and a fresh plate of brownies.  Whatever gossip they had been spitting back and forth faded as he got close enough.

“Have a good walk?” Allison snorted, clearly referencing something she and OS had been talking about.

Stiles rolled his eyes and sat at the table.  There was a mug for him, although it was lukewarm now.  “Thanks,” he muttered, grabbing the hot chocolate, his mind stuck on the nemeton and the nagging sense that there was something he should maybe be fixing in this universe. “Uh, weird question.  Does Derek have his mother’s claws?”

OS blinked and cocked his head.  Stiles wondered if it was a trait he picked up from the pack.  Then Stiles wondered if he himself did the same thing. 

“Uh, yeah.  Why?”

“Are they in a cylinder wooden box with a triskelion on the lid?”

OS narrowed his eyes.  “Yeaaaaahhhh.”

Stiles chewed at his bottom lip.  He didn’t want to get anywhere near the nogitsune.  It was too much, dealing with that again.  He looked over to Allison and the guilt felt new.  She could have grown up into such an amazing woman, but Stiles had to be _that asshole_ and get possessed by a demon.  Typical.

“Uh, so on my list.”

He explained more about the fox spirit under the nemeton, that it was likely in a jar in the root cellar, that if it got out the town would be in trouble, and that the box Talia Hale’s claws were in was made from the wood of the nemeton.  “It’ll hold it indefinitely, but that’s the only thing that can really be done.  It would be safer if you moved it.  Maybe cursed the box after.  I’d offer, but I can’t trust my magic won’t just let it loose right now.”

“I’ll bring it up to Derek,” OS promised, understanding the gravity in Stiles’s voice. 

“How did it get out in your timeline?” Allison asked.  “I just don’t get how our lives could get so off track from one another.”

“Maybe it’s best if we don’t –” OS started.

“There was a whole other person affecting the timeline.  It changed the course of everything,” Stiles said.  It should be enough of an explanation.  One life and the whole world was different.

They talked about different things until the wolves came home.  Allison’s work at the museum, some of the kids at the high school OS was counseling, what movies were coming out soon.  Small talk.  It was almost normal, like he and OS really were just twins or cousins.  No parallel universes needed.

Two days later, after walking Derek and Allison through plucking out the immortal fly and trapping it in the wooden box (which they then buried in a chest full of mountain ash and locked), Isaac came to the house with the mail from the end of the driveway.

“Noticed the flag was up,” he said, dropping everything on the kitchen counter.  “There’s a package for you.”

It took a moment for the words to register.  Stiles stared at the thick, padded sleeve, a messy scrawl of their address on the tracking sticker.  He reached over with shaking fingers.  This wasn’t just a formality for living in this universe.  This was something more.  

His new identity.


	7. dead ends

Nikodem Sebastian Rzymski was a broken man, a stripped to the bones version of his parallel and brimming with an energy that tasted of something burnt.  He was broken, but he was rich.

The first thing Stiles did was go through every document C:Breax sent him.  Driver’s License, Birth Certificate, Passport, Social Security Card, College Diplomas, Credit Cards with years of fabricated credit history.  His American Express had an bottomless credit limit, and while C:Breax couldn’t give him actual money, that was as good as robbing a bank.  Stiles had no intention of staying long enough for credit card companies to come knocking.

Stiles pondered the morality of theft in a parallel universe almost the entire flight to Virginia.

He had been able to find Lydia Martin on his own.  It wasn’t hard.  She had graduated top of her class from MIT and joined NASA technically before she finished her degree.  She was stationed at the Langley Research Center.  It only took a little digging to find her address. 

It was a nice complex.  Lydia must be paid well.  Stiles didn’t find that surprising.  He rang the doorbell again and heard a muffled call from the other side.  A few moments later Lydia opened the door, her hair in a towel and wearing an emerald green, silky jumpsuit.  She was shorter than Stiles remembered, but then he noticed she was barefoot. 

“Yes?”  She asked, polite but curt before really taking in Stiles’s appearance.  “Do I know you?”

“Yes and no,” Stiles said wryly.  It would make sense that Lydia wouldn’t recognize him.  In this line of events they hadn’t become friends.

Her eyes narrowed, shrewd and calculating in a manner Stiles was all too familiar with.  “Oh.  You’re Allison’s friend, with the weird name.  You had a crush on me in high school.”  Her body posture stiffened, primed for fight or flight.  “Did you _stalk me_ here?”

Stiles sighed.  This wasn’t going to be easy.  “I mean, technically.  Not the point.  I need your help.”

“ _My_ help,” Lydia scoffed.  “And why should I give it?”

“Listen, I don’t know how much you figured out over the years, but at the very least you’ve had a habbit of turning up places you didn’t remember going and finding things you probably never wanted to see, am I right?”

Her face pulled tight, making her large eyes swallow her features.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”  He swung his backpack around to get into the pouch and pulled out the book in Old German.  He held it out to her.  “Do you think you can translate this?”

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms.  “That’s what Allison wanted out of me, too.  Tell me again, _why_ I should help you?”

“Because you’re the smartest person I know and it must have been driving you crazy to not know what was going on in Beacon Hills for all these years,” he bargained. 

Lydia stared at him for a long moment, judging him with her sharpest stare.  Then she opened the door wider.  “Come on in.  And don’t touch anything.”  The smile she gave him was sickly sweet.  This was going to be… interesting.

Stiles settled onto the pristine white couch and waited for Lydia to go fix her hair and find some shoes.  He wondered if she was testing him, making him feel awkward in her apartment.  There was probably a camera watching him so she would know if he _did_ touch anything.  He didn’t mind.  He had waited weeks just to be able to get out here.  He could stand a few minutes alone. 

By the time Lydia came back out, he had pulled out the few other books he had brought with him, ready to work. 

“So,” Lydia said, sliding into the seat near him.  “What’s your name again?”

Stiles smirked.  Good question.  “How long do I have your attention?” he asked. 

“Depends on how interesting this all is,” she said with a tight smile.  “But I do have dinner plans at eight.”

That gave him a few hours.  “I’m going to tell you some truly insane things, so let’s start this out with you looking me up.”  He waited for her to pull out her phone.  “Stiles Stilinski.”

“I remember that,” she mused as her nails clacked against the phone screen.  “It can’t possibly be your _real_ name.” 

“It’s a nickname,” Stiles agreed. He waited for Lydia to speed read the first few articles that came up.  The town’s local paper had covered the other him a few times.  The tragic car crash involving the beloved Sherriff’s son.  The engagement announcement.  A few of his accomplishments at the high school.

“What am I supposed to be looking at here?” Lydia huffed, unamused.

“You’re smart, Lydia.  You tell me.”

“Well you’re not wearing a ring, but men don’t always go for engagement rings, and the wedding hasn’t happened yet.  But I’m more curious about how you’re not in a wheelchair or the fact you apparently dropped thirty pounds since this photo was taken in December.”  She flipped the phone Stiles’s way to show OS in a wheelchair at some school holiday event.

“That’s not me,” he said simply.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s not me,” he repeated.  “But I am Stiles Stilinski.”

“Are you saying this man in an imposter?” she scoffed.

“No,” Stiles said, shaking his head.  He kept eye contact with her and leaned in.  This was important for her to understand.  “We’re _both_ Stiles Stilinski.”

She frowned.  “Do you, perhaps, just throwing this out there, need to see a therapist?”

Stiles flopped backwards into the couch.  “You’re being dense on purpose.  You may not know me, but I know you, Lydia.  I know how your mind works.  You may be afraid to voice it out loud because it _sounds_ ludicrous, but you let me in here because I knew about your weird feelings.”  He looked around, trying to find something in her picture perfect apartment to call back on, but any personality and sentiment must be hidden in her bedroom.  “You’ve known for years that the world is more than your math and science could explain.”

“You are Stiles, but so is he,” she repeated, unimpressed and guarded. 

“He’s the one you went to high school with,” he said.

“And you’re, what,” she mused, “the one hidden in the basement?”

“I’m the one a different version of you became best friends with until we parted ways for college.”

“You,” she scoffed, hearing Stiles’s words as some kind of hypothesis rather than literal fact.  “My best friend?”

Stiles chewed at his thumb nail and wondered what he could say to make her believe this before pulling out the whole parallel universe shtick.  “Your grandmother died in Eichen House.”

“That’s public knowledge,” she snapped, growing cold at the mention.

“She died in Eichen House,” Stiles continued, “because an orderly killed her.  My… The Sheriff just arrested him.  I was able to tell the police where he kept tapes of his victims as he killed them.  But, uh, she also drilled a hole in her head because she wanted to tap into this power.  She had once felt her lover die at on a boat.  And she tried everything to figure it out after that.  The lake house your family sold off, it’s where your grandmother kept all of her equipment to try different methods.  Recording devices, stuff like that.  Um.  She wasn’t crazy.  You should know that.  Sure, maybe she went insane in her pursuit, but she wasn’t crazy.  Those powers were real.  And you have them, too.”

“I don’t know who you bribed to get that information but –”

“She called you Ariel.”

Lydia’s mouth snapped shut. 

Stiles bit his bottom lip before whispering, “You used to read _The Little Mermaid_ together.”

“How do you know that?” Lydia asked, anger brimming in her voice. 

“Because,” he said, knowing that even if she doesn’t fully believe him, she’s no longer bored, “in _my line of events_ you and I became good friends.”

“Your line of events,” she repeated, this time the weight of his words hitting her.  He could see the gears turn, the spark in her eye at finding a new puzzle.  “Are you seriously proposing that you came from a parallel universe?”

“Yes.”

She stood abruptly and marched over to her kitchen, pulling out two coffee mugs and slipping a pod into the Keurig, all the while spouting out mathematical theorems about the multiverse theory, and not the dumbed down kind he had been reading up about online. 

When she came back, handing over a cup of what smelled of hazelnut, Stiles had lost her thread of thought. 

“Lydia, it’s magic.  _Magic_ brought me here.”

“Magic is just science we don’t understand yet,” she stated simply. 

Stiles wondered if his Lydia believed that.  He squinted as if that would help make a point.  “If you explore your own powers, you can scream loud enough to physically knock people over and witness the past in locations where people died horribly.  You really want to call that science?”  He didn’t think mentioning how unscientific a werewolf transformation was.  It simply didn’t make any kind of biological sense. 

The Dread Doctors were able to make chimeras, though, so there must be some overlap between science and magic somewhere.

“You keep saying _my powers_.  What powers and why would I have them?”

He rubbed at his shoulder and wondered how to bring up everything Lydia was going to want to know.  “You have to understand, first and foremost.  The supernatural is real.”

“Supernatural?  Like…”

“Werewolves.  That was Allison’s big secret, what she was keeping from you.”

“That she was a werewolf?” she was sound skeptical again.

Stiles shook his head.  “She’s actually from a family of werewolf hunters.”

Something passed over Lydia’s features.  “Argent.  Silver.  And she was so insistent on doing that project on the Beast of Gevaudan.  Why didn’t I see that back then?”

“Because you didn’t want to.  Not really.”  And without Jackson also being pulled into the mix, it was easier to keep this Lydia away from it all.  “But Isaac, Erica, and Boyd all got turned tail end of Sophomore year.”

Lydia hummed, no doubt preparing a long list of questions.  “What else.”

“Short list?  Fairies.  Wendigos.  Kitsunes.  Berserkers.  _Banshees_.”

“And that’s what I am?” she huffed.  “A… banshee?”

“Think about it, Lydia,” he insisted.  “You first started screaming at Death when the ‘mountain lion’ killed an employee at the movie rental place.  You found more than one body when our English teacher was actually a serial killer.”  Stiles reached over to his pile and pulled out the one item he had in his favor.  “You kept drawing this.”  He flipped open Lydia’s old notebook.  It didn’t matter what page, they were all the same.  The tree.  “Only it wasn’t a tree.”  He turned it upside down.  “They were roots.  That’s where Jennifer was operating out of, a root cellar in town located on a cluster of ley lines called a nemeton.  Had they not stopped Jennifer when they did, you would have learned about yourself when she tried to kill you and you screamed with your real power for the first time.”

Lydia’s wide eyes became glossy with a film of unshed tears.  This life was so different than his own, he wondered what other encounters she had experienced, who’s ends she had felt coming without understanding.  “So, what, I’m an omen of death?”

“That’s only one very small part of who and what you are, Lydia,” he said seriously.  “But it is a big reason as to why I tracked you down.”

“Why?” she asked, looking at the table of things Stiles had set out.

“Because, by coming to this universe, and meeting myself, I’ve also become an omen of death.”  He slid the book he had offered at the door over to Lydia, “and I can’t read Old High German.”

She picked it delicately off the table and began to skim its pages.  “And what do I get out of this?” she asked, deceptively calm.

“A fun puzzle and answers to any question you may have as long as it’s in my knowledge wheelhouse.”  It’s all he really could offer.  With any luck it would be enough. 

Lydia hummed as she continued looking at the book.  “This might take me a while, and I still have my own work to do.”

“I’ll find a room to rent out.” 

She waved him off.  “You can stay in the guest room.  I’d rather keep an eye on you.  As a matter of fact,” she said, snapping the book closed.  “I’ve been meaning to fire my assistant.  He’s a brownnoser and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, it’s terribly annoying.  Come into work with me.  You can fetch my coffee.”

Stiles smirked.  “Never change, Lydia.”  He looked at his backpack.  Well, Isaac’s old backpack.  He only had one change of clothes and he felt guilty about leaving Beacon Hills with only a note on his dresser.  He had told Isaac he was going a few towns over to find a suit for the wedding, calling up an Uber off Isaac’s phone since the werewolf had work to do that day.  “Can you let me know where the nearest mall is?  I need to buy a phone.  And maybe some clothes.”

Luckily, OS’s number was the same one Stiles had in his own line, so he was able to call up the pack as soon as he had a working phone.  _“What the actual fuck, Nik_ ,” OS yelled once Stiles greeted him.

“This is better,” Stiles insisted, “for both of us.  Our sparks were going haywire the longer we were in each other’s presence.”

 _“You still should have_ told _us,”_ he hissed.  _“I cannot believe – no I can believe because I have in my day been an impulsive asshole, but Jesus Fuck.  You couldn’t just tell one of us?”_

“I didn’t want to fight about it, and there would have been a fight.  Okay.  I’m here now, you know where I am, I’ll be back once I figure out how to fix everything.”

 _“What if there’s nothing to fix, Nik._ ”

“And what?” Stiles protested.  “Stay here?  A world where my entire identity is a fabrication and I can’t even rely on my own magic?”

_“Do you really want to go back, though?”_

It hit Stiles so suddenly, hearing it in his own voice.  _Did_ he want to go back?  A world with no friends, no family, only broken relationships and an addiction to bad choices that was going unchecked.  His entire venture into research, tearing through the Hale Library and books Deaton gave him was solely based on the fact he was afraid.  Afraid of making things worse for these people so that the ghosts of his past could have some rest. 

Either way, he’d need to know.  Being in this universe, being a double walker, it could be too much for the magic coursing between the both of them to handle.  He needed Lydia to translate the book.  He needed to do one last good thing and keep them safe.  If he couldn’t do that, then he couldn’t stay, whether he wanted to or not.  So, Stiles pushed the thought out of his mind.  He couldn’t let himself dwell on it.

“It doesn’t matter.  I’ll call you later.”

_“Are you at least coming back for the wedding?  You’re messing up my table arrangements.”_

Stiles almost chuckled, but the weight in his chest was heavier than his other self could lift.  “I’ve got to go,” he said, not promising anything.  Stiles ended the call before OS could say anything else. 

The next few days were filled with shadowing Lydia, becoming a little afraid of the minds over at NASA, and learning how terrifying Lydia sounds when she speaks German. 

“I think I got the passage you were talking about,” Lydia said, coming back into the room with her hair in a bun and a glass of wine.  “But I’m not sure what I’m reading.” 

“Lay it on me,” Stiles sighed, looking up from the pages of Lydia’s translations he was annotating.  So far the book had been an excellent resource on different accounts of doppelgängers in times when magic was most rampant in the world.  They were sometimes living ghosts haunting the earth before their death, or sometimes split reflections, sometimes shape shifters.

“Okay, so this is the line you told me, that _does_ roughly translate to _the Double Walker cannot thrive where the Double Walker dwells_.”  She paused and set the wine glass down on the coffee table, tugging the pencil out from behind her ear and scribbling something in the margins of the page.  “So, it starts out saying, um…” her words came out slow and calculated as she puzzle pieced and paraphrased the ancient prose.  “While doppelgängers vary in form, the one true consistent is that they are not of this earth.  Nothing good ever comes from creatures crossing realms, but for the doppelgänger, this is… oh he’s trying to make a pun, this is double true of the double walker.” Lydia rolled her eyes and sat down, taking a sip of her wine.  “Being of… a duplicitous nature, the ley lines cannot support both beings.  The very act of their birth?  That’s the best I can make of it.  Birth in this realm.”  Lydia stopped, staring at the page and mouthing along to the words written.  “The birth of the doppelgänger in this realm marks tragedy for both the man and the beast.  In this context, doppelgängers can’t continue to live when they come into existence because…” she read ahead, “they are sharing the life energy of their copy.  That’s the only part of you that hasn’t been duplicated, and because that energy is being split.”  Lydia turned the page and tried to parse out the dense cursive. 

She tucked her feet under her and reached for the ledger on the table.  “Okay, okay, I think I have it.”

Lydia quickly scrawled down her translations and thoughts.  Stiles was smart, clever, and great and solving mysteries, but watching Lydia’s brain in motion made him feel like he was walking next to a bullet train.

She slipped a bookmark between the pages and shut the book, focusing solely on her own connections now.  “So, in your own line of events, you’re you, you have your own life force and energy, etc.  So does this Stiles.  However, as far as these ley lines as you call them are concerned, you’re one in the same.  So when you came over, with your separate body and memory, the – the magic,” she pulled the word out between her teeth, still not comfortable with throwing away her purely scientific viewpoints, “sees two bodies but one life force.  It’s now fueling both versions of you with the same energy meant for one.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, trying to figure out what that would mean further down the line.

“So, let’s say everything in life is predetermined to a degree, for argument’s sake.  And the Stiles in this universe and you both had these set dates you were supposed to die.”  She made a timeline under her notes and marked them.  “However, because the energy that would have lasted you until that point in time is now being split between the two of you,” she marked the line in half, “for the universe to balance itself you no longer get your predetermined death, but one sooner than expected.  And the only way for someone to die before their predetermined death –”

“Is for some kind of accident to occur,” Stiles concluded.  “Which is why they’re an omen of death, and most cases were very bloody.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t good news.  Stiles sank back into the couch.  “So, it doesn’t matter that I distanced myself from Oz.  The fact that I’m still in his universe means I’m chewing out our combined life force.”  Stiles cursed violently and tossed the pencil he was holding onto his books. 

Lydia sipped her wine and watched Stiles carefully.  He could feel her gaze roving over him like spiders crawling on his skin.  “You’re getting too emotional about this,” Lydia said.

“We’re talking about my super traumatic and unavoidable demise, I think I’m allowed to be angry,” Stiles sneered. 

“It’s clouding your ability to look at the problem logically,” she clarified with a sneer of her own. 

“Fine, let’s lay out the facts, shall we?” Stiles mocked.  “I’m in a universe where I’m not supposed to be.  The longer I’m here, the sooner I’m going to die.  But the only way I’ve figured out to maybe _possibly_ go home involves recreating a magical accident. But with my own magic out of my control, it’s likely to backfire in a whole new complicated way.  So basically, I’m stuck here until I fucking implode or something.”

Lydia put down her wine glass and leaned forward.  “You’re missing the obvious.”

“Which is?”

“If the problem is that you and Oz are sharing the same life energy, you can choose to direct it to only one of you.”

Stiles blinked, taking in her words.  “Are you suggesting I murder my doppelgänger?”

Lydia shrugged.  “You’re more of a martyr, so maybe I’m suggesting suicide.  But all I’m really saying is that you’re not looking beyond the problem right now.  You’re _refusing_ to look for solutions.  Find them all, even the ones you don’t want to consider.  It’s how we solve problems here.  Start with the simplest, crudest possible response.  Then find ways to make it better.”  She picked up _Die verhedderten Fäden des Schicksals und ihre vielen Porträts_ and opened it up to her bookmark.  “There’s not too much left here.  I should be able to finish it by tomorrow.”

It was a clear dismissal.  Stiles looked at his own notes.  Research was all he really knew how to do.  Between college and grad school and solving problems of the supernatural, it’s practically been the only thing he had been doing since he was sixteen. 

“Maybe I should kill myself.”  It wasn’t the first time he had suggested it since being here.

“You’d still be leaving Oz with a slightly truncated lifespan and promise of a horrible death,” Lydia mused, eyes firmly fixed on the book.  “Which your guilt complex wouldn’t let you get away with.  Plus, I’m confident you’re smarter than that, Stiles.  Find a way.” 

Stiles sighed and picked up the blue book of fey that had first alerted him to a possibility of going home.  He took it to the guest room Lydia was lending him so he could sulk in peace.  Lydia was right.  He wouldn’t be able to just leave knowing he had condemned OS in the process. 

He found his phone on the nightstand and checked it for messages.  OS had given out his number to the whole pack and they had been trying to keep in contact. 

There were a few funny photos from Erica of patrons at the bar and a few questions from Malia about what his favorite foods were.  She wanted to surprise OS as a wedding gift, and he was the best person to ask, apparently.  OS asked again if he’d be making it to the wedding.  Stiles ignored it, like he had the last few nights.  He didn’t want to go back until he had a plan of action.  It was too easy with them to lull into a false sense of security, be pulled into pack moments like the barbeque or movie night.  Stiles had tried his best to stay in the den, but they would always pull him out saying he worked too hard.

Lydia would never claim Stiles was working too hard.  If anything, he wasn’t working hard enough if tonight’s conversation was anything to go by.  It may not be safe for him anywhere, as a doppelgänger in the wrong universe, but he was safer here.     

Isaac had continued their research in his absence, sending over a few notes of information as well as some casual conversation from his day.  He was, as had been the case since falling into this line of events, the easiest to talk to.

Allison didn’t bother talking to him, she was probably still the most cautious about the whole situation.  She was the only one that saw things through the same lens as Stiles.  He was a threat, whether he meant to be or not.  Allison’s hunter training sharpened her mind to different angles that the pack refused to see because he smelled just like _their_ Stiles.  Being human and hunter and not OS, Allison kept a level head on the matter, which Stiles was thankful for. 

Boyd didn’t bother talking to him because it was, well, Boyd.

There was one message that caused him pause.  Derek.   Everything about Derek screwed up his stomach, making him feel more alone in this universe than he had in his own, even though he didn’t have Derek’s affection in either.  There was something cruel about knowing this Derek _could_ love him, but didn’t, because he loved OS.  It was worse watching Derek be with a version of himself than it had been knowing Derek chose someone else. 

Stiles let his thumb hover over the _message_ bubble, wondering if he should reply.

_Cora’s coming in tomorrow.  I’m nervous.  What was she like when you knew her?_

Did it matter?  Would this Cora be the same as the bitter teen he’d known personally for only a month?  Derek would learn soon enough, either way, what Cora was really like. 

_She knows how to use her eyebrows like a true Hale._

Send.

The little ellipses bubble popped up almost immediately.  Stiles waited, holding his breath.  It shouldn’t mean this much to him.  There was nothing but dead ends between him and any version of Derek.  And yet somehow, Stiles was starting to feel something other than his cold and rotten heart.  He was starting to feel something more and something real that he hadn’t since before his dad died. 

He hated himself for letting these feelings grow for a man he couldn’t have.

When Derek’s message arrived, the screen was blurry.  Stiles realized he was close to tears. 

Fuck.

Lydia was right.  He couldn’t do this.  OS didn’t deserve a horrific death and this Derek didn’t deserve to experience that.  Stiles was going to find a way.  


	8. waning

“Heeyyyyyyyyyyyy,” Stiles drawled nervously into the phone while pulling Lydia’s luggage out of the trunk of the rental car.  “Question.  How much will it mess up your seating arrangements if I show up at the wedding with a plus one?”

There was silence on the other end of the line for two very long breathes in and out.  “ _Nik.  The wedding_ tomorrow _.  Are you_ kidding _me right now?  Don’t answer that.  You’re serious.  Yes.  Fine. Whatever.  Come to my special day with whoever the fuck.  You better not be late._ ”

“We’ll be at the bar tonight,” Stiles promised.  Erica had sent the whole itinerary over last week.  OS didn’t respond before he hung up just as Stiles was snapping the trunk closed.  “Oh god this is such a mistake.”

“Don’t be such a baby about it,” Lydia scoffed, reading the book of fey for the third time.  “Now let’s go.  I’m not showing up in clothes I wore on a plane.”  Stiles grabbed her suitcase and his backpack and they headed into the Best Western.  It was two hours later Lydia was finally suitable enough to be seen by the public and Stiles drove them Derek’s bar.

Stiles hadn’t actually seen it before.  All he knew was where the old _Borders_ was.  You wouldn’t mistake it for a book store now.  This version of Derek was much better at retrofitting a space.  Or maybe he actually hired contractors while the Derek back home probably still lived with a hole in the wall. 

“Two omens of death walk into a bar,” Stiles muttered as the neared the entrance.

Lydia smacked his stomach with the back of her hand.  “I wished that were only a joke and not the literal truth of the moment.”

Stiles chuckled lowly as he pushed the door.  He held it open for her and they stepped inside.  The place was done up for the event.  Stiles recognized his handy work of string lanterns that spotted the ceiling.  The usual set up was clearly pushed aside for the rehearsal dinner buffet.  It was just the pack and John and Melissa.  It made sense it was such a small group.  Neither groom had much of family and the only people making up the wedding party were likely to be pack.  He wondered who would stand on whose side for the actual event.

All eyes turned to Stiles and Lydia the moment they entered.  They should have heard him nearing, but maybe they were just too preoccupied in their pre-celebration. 

God, weddings were such a hassle. 

“Lydia!” Allison said, stock still.  The look of shock on her face was comical.  Stiles never seen their trained hunter so utterly flabbergasted. 

“Allison,” Lydia said primly, nodding her head regally in greeting. 

Stiles had never told anyone here what Lydia was, what she could do, or why she had been drawing trees their junior year of high school.  When he had sent Derek and Allison to the root cellar to collect the old firefly that was trapped there, he never connected the dots for them as to why he knew about the place. 

Judging by the tension in the room, maybe that was a mistake.

“Sad Stiles!” Malia cheered.  She raced in from the back room, a manic smile on her face.  “Your back!  Who’s your friend?  She smells nice.  Where were you?  I’m glad you made it!  Derek and Stiles let me make cupcakes for tonight.”

Lydia snorted beside him, a dainty sound that almost couldn’t be classified as a snort, but it was.  “Sad Stiles?” she muttered, amused.

“They let you make cupcakes?” Stiles asked, grinning.  “That’s awesome.  When do I get to eat one?”

All the little bar tables had been pushed together to make one long place for everyone to sit together.  Malia showed them to their seats, squashed in at the end.  She kept chatting with them until Erica told her the cupcakes were cool enough to frost.

“So,” Erica said, plopping down on the other side of Lydia.  “Lydia Martin?”

“Yes?” Lydia simmered behind a polite smile.  “Erica Reyes.”

“I’m surprised you remember me,” Erica grinned.

“High school wasn’t that long ago, and I have an excellent memory.”

Erica hummed and then looked between the two of them.  “You going to tell us why you brought miss perfect to the rehearsal dinner?” she asked Stiles.

He shrugged and scratched at the back of his neck.  “I needed her help.  I’d rather not get into it without Oz–” Stiles shook his head.  “Without Stiles.”

Erica raised her hands in mock surrender.  “Fine, fine, keep your secrets.”

It wasn’t long before the rest of the pack settled in for toasts and speeches and sickeningly adoring looks.  When OS came out, their eyes had met, and Stiles felt that now familiar strain between them.  A misfire of magic being split between two people.  Neither kept their gaze long.  Derek, on the other hand… Stiles couldn’t stop looking at Derek.  He didn’t even seem to notice.  All eyes were on the couple, after all.  It shouldn’t be weird that Stiles was watching Derek the way he was.  And yet it felt like Stiles was a peeping tom, staring at something forbidden.

Stiles had never seen Derek this elated before.

The only thing that shook him from his stupor was when OS thanked his dad and Melissa for everything that had done for him, and it became apparent to Stiles between one the span of a heartbeat that the two of them were dating.  OS’s accident and loss of walking had brought them together, apparently.  Too much time spent in hospitals.

Then Stiles remembered that his own dad wasn’t really with Melissa.  He wasn’t happy or whole or alive.  Melissa had patched things up with her ex-husband, although not to the point where they were dating or in love, but where they could be amicable and support Scott through college and vet school and be a family on holidays.

The rehearsal dinner was really a small affair compared to a lot of weddings, but that was for the best.  Stiles needed to talk to OS.  They needed to do the preparations tonight.

When the actual dinner was finished and the pack was distracted by Isaac’s attempt at DJ-ing, Stiles was able to pull OS aside.  He was sure everyone noticed, but that didn’t matter.  As long as they had a modicum of privacy.

“You know, before I met Derek, I thought the only way you’d be at my wedding was if you were the bride,” OS huffed, eying Lydia over. 

She rolled her eyes and flipped her hair in typical Lydia fashion.  “Trust me, this wasn’t something I had expected to happen either.  But we don’t have a lot of time.”

Lydia looked Stiles’s way and he knew it was time to lay it all out on the table. 

“Stiles,” he started, pulling over a chair so they could easily talk at eye level.  “I wasn’t wrong.  I wanted to be.  I really did.  But I wasn’t wrong.  I _am_ a doppelgänger.  One universe can’t sustain us both at the same time.  So, the longer I’m here, the sooner both of us are going to die.  Now, I found a way to go home.  It would be easy, if my magic were acting normally, but it’s not.  And it wouldn’t fix the fact that I’ve doomed you to an early grave.”

“So, what are you here for?” OS asked.  He was cold and clinical with Stiles, not wanting to think about his death so close to his wedding.  “Why bring her?”

Stiles ran a hand over his eyes and listened to the sound of _What’s Up_ by 4 Non Blondes in the other part of the bar and Erica demanding the AUX cord.

“Do you remember the Darach?”

“Of course I remember that,” OS scoffed. 

It would have been around when OS and Derek finally got together, Stiles remembered.  “Right, well, in my line of events she got further with her plot.  There’s a level of give and take in magic.  She was making sacrifices to obtain power.”

“Just because I didn’t go to your fancy magic graduate school doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, Nik.  Spit it out.”

“She took our parents.”

That shut OS up pretty quick.

“Chris, Melissa, and John.  And if we didn’t do something, they would be killed, so we made a substitution.  We sacrificed ourselves.”

“What does that mean?”

“It was a ritual where we technically died, and some other shit happened.  The point is, right now me being here is eating away our life force, but it doesn’t have to.  We can give it something else.  Lydia’s here because she can help direct that energy transfer.  She’s a creature of death, believe or not.  But for it to work, it has to be both of us.”

“Give it what?” OS asked, looked warily between him and Lydia.

“Our magic.”

This shouldn’t be as big of a deal for OS as it was for Stiles.  The other him had never really learned magic, barely knew any of it coursed through his veins, let alone how _much._ But Stiles also knew himself.  In a pack of wolves, even without the supernatural fighting them at every turn, he would want to feel like he could contribute, he’d want to feel powerful.  And OS had lost his ability to run with his wolves.  The knowledge that he could _learn magic_ must be so tempting, despite the protests he had made against Stiles during his stay here. 

“You have to understand,” Stiles continued when OS said nothing, “that it wouldn’t just be saving yourself from an early death.  I wasn’t wrong about being a doppelgänger but Deaton wasn’t wrong either.  I traveled across the ley lines because there was something in this universe that I could help fix.  In my line, when me, Allison, and Scott used ourselves as substitute sacrifices, it ultimately finished the fivefold knot Jennifer was trying to create.  In doing so, it woke up the nemeton.  Beacon Hills got its name because it used to _be_ a beacon.  And what happened in my world, it was dark, and it called to its like.  But if we give up our magic for the nemeton, it won’t be dark.  Beacon Hills will become a beacon again, but not for evil.”

“Why does it need to wake up?” OS asked, as if he had forgotten the part about the ordeal saving his life.  “Why can’t things stay the way they are?”

“Because–”  “Because,” Lydia interrupted, “this town is dying.  I did the research.  People are moving out of here in droves, business are shutting down.  And when’s the last time there was a high school reunion?  No one’s coming back, Oz.  Satellite images of the preserve show that sections of it are just withering away.  And yet no conservation scientists have come by to study it or reverse what’s happening?  Because they all feel, on some level, the same thing I knew the second I crossed county lines.  You’re living in a ghost town.  It’s only a matter of time before you all leave or are forgotten.  I didn’t believe in this nonsense when Nik knocked on my door, but I can see the effects plain as day.  I’ve been tracking ley lines across the country.  There’s a cluster that died a number of years back.  The area’s all but deserted now.  Nothing grows, and no one cares.  Don’t let that happen here.”

The truth was, saving the town didn’t take OS’s magic, just Stiles’s would be fine.  He would have to give it up to get back home and, in doing so, would refuel the nemeton.  But they had to stick this hard with OS.  It had been a matter of discussion on the plane.  Stiles knew himself well enough to know that OS wouldn’t want to give up hope for himself unless he knew the trade off was hope for someone else. 

And the pack, this town?  That was the only thing that had ever really mattered to Stiles, as much as he loathed it to admit. 

Stiles knew himself.  He’d rather die an early death than make the pack weaker, but he’d rather be weaker than let the town die. 

They waited a few moments.  The sound of the pack was getting restless.  It was clear they were doing their best not to snoop.  Who knew how much they already heard. 

“What do I need to do?”

“Tomorrow’s a new moon.  Your reception starts around nightfall.  Just, come to the nemeton then.  We’ll have everything else ready.  It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

OS clearly wasn’t happy about this.  It was his wedding.  His special day interrupted by magical mayhem. 

“Will it hurt?” OS whispered, looking to the door of Derek’s office.  He probably didn’t want the pack to hear that, out of everything else.

Stiles frowned.  “I don’t know.”

OS squared his shoulders and nodded.  “Fine.  But just.”  OS took a deep breath and looked Stiles straight in the eye.  “You pulled me aside because you weren’t planning on saying goodbye.  Again.”

Stiles looked to Lydia for support, but she merely quirked an eyebrow.  OS was right, after all, and Lydia knew it. 

“I’m not pack, Stiles,” he pleaded.  “I’m not even supposed to be here.”  _And I don’t want to leave._   He couldn’t say that.  Just like he couldn’t say goodbye.  “Let me leave without a fuss.”

OS didn’t say another word.  He was thinking.  About what exactly, even Stiles couldn’t guess.  OS wheeled around them and pushed open the door.  Noise from the bar flooded in and Stiles was less worried about the pack having listened in to their whole conversation.  However, Derek was waiting on the other side. 

They made eye contact for a heavy moment.  Stiles was sure they would be talking later.  But for now, Derek merely took OS’s hand and asked what he wanted to drink.

After having one of Malia’s cupcakes, Stiles and Lydia slipped out without much of a fuss.  Stiles didn’t listen to Lydia prattle on about the way Allison and Erica had talked to her all night, nor did he spend too long thinking about the way Boyd and John acted like old friends at their seats on the far side of the table, or that Melissa and John were together, or the slightly salty taste of Malia’s imperfect cupcakes.  He drove the rental car back to the hotel, mind buzzing numbly as he went over the plan. 

When he parked and turned off the engine, before he could move for the door, Lydia asked a question that cut through the haze. 

“Are you sure you’re making the right decision, not telling them what will happen to you?”

It had been a point of debate ever since Stiles found the solution. 

“You’re the only one that can know, Lydia.  And you won’t tell them.”

She rolled her shoulders back and puffed out her chest.  “Maybe I will.  You won’t be here to stop me.”

Stiles sighed and rested his head against the steering wheel.  They only went around in circles with this.  “The whole point of me leaving is so that they can live a happy life.  Let them think it’ll be both ways.  Please.”

Lydia huffed and pushed open her door.  She wouldn’t tell them.  She thought OS deserved to know.  Lydia wanted OS to understand exactly the kind of sacrifices Stiles was making for a world and a life that wasn’t even his.  Stiles thought letting them know defeated the purpose.  She’d respect his wishes, in the end. 

Unless, somehow, this bizarre situation was to present itself again, all mention of what would happen to Stiles would stay in Lydia’s journal and nowhere else.  They had a happy life, and seeing Derek and OS together tonight only strengthened his resolve on the matter.   

“Let’s just get changed and head out,” he said as they made it inside.  “It’s going to be a long night.”

Hours later, under the last light of the waning moon, Lydia declared their preparations done, the little blue book clasped firmly in her manicured hands.

“What are you going to do,” Stiles asked, “after all this?” 

Lydia had a job and a life to get back to, obviously.  But knowing that she was a banshee, knowing about the supernatural and all the things she _didn’t yet understand_ , he wondered if she would want to study it at all.

“I don’t intend to make happy with your friends, Stiles,” she mused, flipping her hair over her shoulder.  “I’m happy where I’m at in my life.  Even with all this,” she raised her arms, indicating the nemeton and everything they had learned the last few weeks, “it’s good to know what I am, but that doesn’t change who I’ve always been.  I feel settled, with this knowledge, and maybe the day will come where I’ll seek out more, but I’m a scientist and a mathematician, and that’s the life I want to have.”

Stiles hummed, clearing the dirt from his nails.  “I’ll find you,” he promised, “the you in my line.  We were good friends, before.”  Stiles smiled up at her before getting to his feet and wiping grass and leaves from his pants.  “I think it’s high time I find my own pack, even if it’s not Scott’s.  I can’t keep being a drifter.”

Lydia looped her arm around Stiles’s and began their march back to the main road where the car was parked.  “Good.  This vagabond look isn’t good on you.  You find me and I’ll dress you up right.”  Stiles chuckled.  “I may not have any plans to come back to Beacon Hills,” she added after a few moments of silence, “but I am glad I got to meet _you_.  It’s unfortunate we won’t be able to communicate.  And maybe I could be good friends with Oz the way you are with the other me, but that potential isn’t enough to make this place worth it.”

“Maybe it will be,” he said, “once the magic’s back.”

Lydia hummed.  “Maybe.  Either way, know that I’ll be doing what I want.”

Stiles grinned.  “I wouldn’t suspect any different.”


	9. wither

As soon as they turned onto the dirt road, Lydia started to pale.  “Oh,” she said, the word escaping her.  “What is this?  What am I feeling right now,” she snapped.

Stiles reached over and grabbed her hand.  She squeezed tightly, knuckles going white from the effort.  “You remember the news story?  We were nine or ten, I think.”

“Oh god, the fire,” Lydia whispered, a hand clasping over her mouth.  “Damnit Stiles.  I _just_ did my makeup.  I cannot cry right now.”

He tried his best to soothe her as they made their way to the house.  “Last night was the hard part,” he reminded her.  “Everything you’re feeling now happened in the past.  You’re okay.”

Stiles was glad he had given the task of clearing out the nogitsune to Derek and Allison before he left to find Lydia.  Inspecting the root cellar now, it was even more obvious how much damage that _thing_ had done in the years since high school.  Stiles’s magic would reverse the damage, and OS’s would more than make up for it, but they were right to do what they could to ward the place ahead of time. 

Plus, they had to put barriers up to make sure OS didn’t accidentally follow Stiles through to the other side.  And more barriers to make sure the only place Stiles traveled to was _home_.  Stiles was pretty certain he was anchored to one path and wouldn’t branch off to yet another dimension, but Lydia wanted to use every precaution she came across.

“Are you ready?” Lydia asked, once her breathing had steadied. 

“To watch myself get married?  Not in the least.”

She huffed out a laugh, a tentative silence settling as they drove the rest of the way to the house.  They were just in time.  It was done on purpose.  Stiles didn’t want to run into too many locals.  John had told them all about his nephew that was in town for the wedding, but the less they saw of him the better. 

Lydia and Stiles took their seats in the back.  Allison and Isaac stood on one side while Erica and Boyd stood on the other.  When the music started, Malia started the procession as a flower girl, who then took a seat in the front next to Melissa and Cora. 

Then John pushed OS down the aisle.  His wheelchair was wrapped in white lace and a small bouquet was arranged on the back of the seat that matched the arrangement attached to the end of the seating rows.  As they pushed past, OS and Stiles caught each other’s eyes.  For the first time since coming to this alternate reality, Stiles thought he was getting a glimpse of something _real_.  Something magical. 

He tore his eyes away, blinking rapidly.  Weddings made everyone emotional, he told himself.  Stiles swallowed down the lump of longing and didn’t watch the aisle when it was Derek’s turn to enter.  In fact, the whole wedding Stiles stared somewhere off to the distance, fighting the pain in his chest and watching the slow and steady decent of the sun behind the tree line.

“Beautiful vows,” Lydia murmured after Derek stopped speaking.  Stiles nodded numbly.  Derek always did have a way for words. 

As soon as they were pronounced husbands and Derek leaned down to kiss OS, Stiles nudged Lydia and the two of them slipped out around to the front.  Behind them, Allison was asking the cheering guests to help move chairs.  Things would be in a bit of chaos for a while, and Lydia needed a different pair of shoes if she was going to be trekking into the woods.

OS and Derek came through the front and Stiles was an idiot to ever think the newly wed werewolf wouldn’t be joining them. 

“We have fifteen minutes before we’re excepted back,” Derek told them, lifting OS out of his seat.

“Oooh, a bridal carry,” OS laughed, “how appropriate.”

Derek rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly down at his now husband.  Husband.  That word rattled inside Stiles’s chest like a loose cog.  He watched them kiss, a short sweet thing, before turning and leading the short expedition. 

It wasn’t that far to the nemeton.  “You going to want to sit so you can touch the stump, but don’t actually sit on it,” Stiles said, gesturing vaguely to the Derek and OS. 

Derek set OS down carefully next to the tree as Stiles hopped on top.  Before he could sit down, however, Derek grabbed at his arm.  Stiles startled at the touch, his line of sight drawn to Derek’s pale eyes without intending to. 

“Promise me something,” Derek said.

Stiles frowned.  “Depends on what that is.”

Derek dropped his grip on Stiles’s arm and looked over to where OS sat.  OS smiled at them and Derek looked back to Stiles.  “I still don’t believe that there’s a universe where I wouldn’t be in love with Stiles.” 

“You’re just high off the wedding,” Stiles protested after a moment of shock.  “Congratulations, by the way.”

Derek wanted to say more, it was as clear as his eyes.  There were a few beats of silence where Derek struggled to find words that Stiles both wanted and dreaded to hear.  Before Derek could talk, however, Lydia clapped her hands, telling them to get going. 

“We don’t want them late for the reception.”

The new moon would help guide them.  Magic was always strongest when the full moon was high, it pulled the earth’s energy like it did the tide.  It being a new moon mean they could have an easier time manipulating the intricacies of what was about to go down.  The answer Stiles and Lydia had found was a balancing act, and they couldn’t afford to fall.

Stiles sat on the stump of the nemeton and placed his palms against the winding rings that told the tree’s history.  So much energy, so many years traced under the tips of his fingers.  OS copied him, placings his hands down on the uneven bark of the nearest root.  Lydia checked over the wards she placed around the clearing, and Derek merely watched.

He could feel it already.  Every moment that passed the spark inside him dimmed, leaving him to fuel the tree and the town.  A part of him felt the ripple of OS’s magic as well, and he noted the small gasp that left his double’s lips when OS felt the pull of a power he didn’t know he had.

Then Stiles felt something new.  The bite on his neck ached like it was fresh and Stiles knew he was linking in with the ley lines on a higher level than before.

“Tell the others I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye,” Stiles said, not looking up from where his hands met the tree stump.  “And, and you guys have been doing such a good job with Malia, so keep that up.  And I left all my fake ID stuff in the car if Stiles ever needs to adopt a new identity.  It’ll be waiting for him.  You’re in debt, by the way.  I spent a lot of money on those credit cards C:Breax gave me.” 

OS laughed, but it was wet with tears.  This was a goodbye and this was a sacrifice, and even if they didn’t know what exactly Stiles was giving up for them, it was still sad.  Stiles felt like he was ripping off an arm.  Despite their differences, despite only having been in this world a short time, despite how much Stiles tried to stay away, saying goodbye to himself was more powerful and painful than he had ever anticipated. 

Stiles looked over to where OS sat, gripping a tree root and breathing heavily, tears down his face and a smile pulling his lips wide.  They stared at each other.  It was the last thing he saw until he did see anything at all.

Lydia felt a weight lift off her chest.  Stiles – Nik – had disappeared, fading into the darkness like a mirage.  She wiped the tears from her cheek and cursed at her ruined foundation.  But then she felt lighter still, and turned to Stiles and Derek, who was once again lifting his newly wed husband into his arms. 

“It worked.”  Stiles’s magic was gone.  Nik was gone.  And so was this pain she had been carrying so long she had forgotten it was there.  The death looming over Stiles had vanished along with his doppelgänger.  He’s okay.  Lydia breathed a sigh of relief.  Maybe they both would be.

.

.

.

The thing about death is that, even when you know it’s coming, it takes you by surprise.  Even when you think to know what to expect, there’s no possible way for anyone to be sure.  It just takes you, swept away by the tide, never to look back or to be seen again.   

How can one feel nothing and yet be able to _feel_ nothing at the same time?  Stiles wasn’t sure.  He wasn’t even conscious of thought to question it.  It just was.  He breathed until he had no lungs.  He saw until he had no eyes.  He thought until he was nothing and then he had no worries if he would ever think again.

But then he could think.  Dizzying thoughts that couldn’t connect from one moment to the next, but thoughts none the less.  His mind wrapped around itself trying to comprehend the distortions of reality, and on some level he knew exactly what was happening, down the to last molecule. 

And then he could see.  Light, so bright his vision might as well stay absent.  He saw his own history, a life he lived, a life he didn’t, the trees, the ley lines, the veins of leaves reaching out like absent hope.  He could see the sky but it wouldn’t stay still. 

He gasped in a breath of air and choked back a cry like a newborn.  His lungs stung in a way too reminiscent of when he had been coughed out of his own body by the nogitsune.  He dug his fingers into the earth like he was trying to root himself, and the brush of light wind against his cheeks felt like razors.  It was as if he had forgotten what it was like to have a body.  The world was stretched too thin and Stiles had been compressed beyond measure. 

Then it all came together.  Stiles was left gasping for air on the forest floor, staring at the canopy of richly colored fall leaves.  His hands were cold, fingers caked in dirt that was hard with and early frost.  It took him a while to realize the rushing noise was his heart racing triple time in his ears.

Stiles was so glad he was drunk the first time that happened to him.  He hoped he was in the right place.  Once he had his bearings, Stiles stood on shaky legs and stumbled through the preserve until he figured out where he was.  The Hale house would be demolished in this line of events.  Scott and his pack lived on the other side of town.  They played more sports than running through the woods, if they could.  Even after all this time, it hadn’t stopped attracting negative energy, although it was letting up slowly every year that passed.

He managed to not run into anything more than a squirrel before he broke out of the tree line and hit the main road.  Stiles was only a few blocks from his house, so he’d go that way first.  Change his clothes, snag his laptop, figure out what else he needed to get done before moving on.  This world felt like a hazy dream, he wasn’t sure where he left off.

When he spotted his old house, he stopped, mid step.  The for-sale sign was gone and the front yard was littered with children’s toys.  A couple of houses down the street already had Christmas decorations up.  It had been summer when Stiles left OS and the others. 

Had someone managed to work around Stiles not being there to push the paperwork forward?  Did he lose time in the jump?  Were new people in his old house because they’d just moved in… or was he living in yet another universe?  Either way there would be no answers at the Stilinski household.

Stiles mourned his laptop as he tried to figure out all the consequences of arriving in yet another timeline.  It wasn’t long before Stiles found himself in a familiar maze of apartment complexes just past the downtown shopping center.  Derek lived around her… if this was his reality.  He took the route he remembered, slipping into the fourth building on 3rd street.  Maybe he was wrong.  This place seemed nicer than he remembered.

Then again, it had been years since he’d visited the loft.  Derek might have had some renovations done. 

His nerves were chewing at him, all the differences adding up in a big way.  Time could have accounted for all of them, but there was no telling with magic involved.  The elevator was working for god’s sake.  He really felt like he had fallen into wonderland.  This coming from a man who just watched a wheelchaired version of himself get married.

When it opened to the top floor, Stiles noticed the heavy metal door from the original industrial framework had been replaced by ornate double doors, carved mahogany or something.  They were beautiful, and a part of Stiles wondered if Derek made them himself, or just had them ordered. 

When he knocked – there was no doorbell – he could hear the faint sound of music playing on the other side of the doors.  He couldn’t quite make it out, but Stiles got unfathomably curious as to what type of music Derek listened to.  It hit him like a freight train that he wasted his time in the other world not getting these types of answers.

The door pulled open and Stiles could make out _Barenaked Ladies_ coming out of someone’s phone.  He was face to face with Braeden and Stiles felt his stomach clench.  This was stupid.  He shouldn’t have come here.  He should have gone to Deaton’s first.

It had been a long time since Stiles had seen the former U.S. Marshall.  She was still beautiful, even with the scars across her throat.  She looked Stiles up and down and smiled, something wicked and smug. “Derek’s in the shower.  Come on in.”  She pushed the door open and waited.  Stiles worried over the idea that he wasn’t back in his world.  Braeden looked at him like she knew something he didn’t.  It was unnerving.  She didn’t move, only staring at him, a triumphant glee behind her eyes that followed him as Stiles wedged his way through the doorframe and into the loft. 

“How long have you been in town?” Braden asked, pulling a k-pod out of nowhere and slipping it into Derek’s coffee machine. 

“Just got in today,” Stiles said, looking around.  It looked different than he remembered, newer furniture and fixed up walls.  But it still felt barren, impersonal, except Braeden’s jacket that was slung over the back of the couch.

“Me too,” she sighed.  The sound of 90’s alt rock switched off mid song and Braeden pocketed her phone.  “Tracked down this nasty wendigo.  Got Derek to help me corner it.  He ended up covered in goop, hence the midday shower.”

Stiles cleared his throat awkwardly.  “How long are you staying in town.”

“I’m not.”  Braeden pulled down a bag of chips.  She offered some to Stiles before pouring a bowl full.  “I’m basing outside of Minneapolis now.  I’m just mooching off of Derek until my bike’s fixed.”

“That’s gotta be a long drive.” 

She shrugged, taking a sip of the now finished coffee.  “I have some pit stops to make, towns to save, deals to make.”

The pipes on the far wall stopped rattling with a sudden hiss and the end of the white noise was startling. 

“Derek’s out of the shower,” Braeden hummed.  “DEREK!  You have company!”

A minute later, he came bounding down the stairs, barefoot and breathtaking. 

Derek, _Derek his Derek_ , was in front of him.

Maybe.  How was he supposed to figure out if he was in his own timeline or not? 

Then Stiles read the look on Derek’s face.

It was raw and regretful and resigned.  He looked heartbroken.

“Stiles?”  Derek cleared his throat.

“I told you,” Braeden said, smirking the same way she had when Stiles opened the door. “It’s like fate or something.”

“What?” Stiles asked.

Derek pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Drop it.”

Whether that was to Stiles or Braeden, Stiles wasn’t sure.

“I’m just saying,” Braeden said with faux innocence. 

“Don’t you have a bounty to turn in?” Derek sniped.

Braeden scoffed.  “At least let me finish my snack before kicking me out.”

Derek’s eyebrows told a story of how she wasn’t fooling him, that snack was made just so she wouldn’t have to leave right away.  He was annoyed and unimpressed. 

Stiles felt good, on some level, to know he could still read Derek like a click bait title no matter the universe.

Derek ultimately caved and turned his attention back to Stiles.  The pain was back, the regret and heartbreak and Stiles wondered what could have possibly happened to elicit that kind of response.

“You should go talk to Deaton,” Derek said.  “I don’t have the book anymore.”

Stiles felt all the walls he’d been building up against his anxiety push in like the trash compactor in _A New Hope_.  They’d messed up.  There was no reason for his Derek to be expecting Stiles.  They had never talked about a book in any of their more recent conversations.  He was in the wrong timeline.


	10. thrive

Stiles’s mind raced at all the implications of Derek’s words.  If he was in the wrong timeline, again, was there another him here?  Did he make himself a doppelganger twice or is this a world without a Stiles to occupy it?  How bad did he fuck up.  He and Lydia had been _so careful_ in coming up with this solution, but what if it didn’t work?  What if OS was cursed to die tragically and it was because the sacrifice didn’t work and OS lost his magic for nothing.  What if –

“Jesus, Derek, you can’t just start off like that, you’re going to give the poor kid a heart attack.”

In the last thirty seconds, Stiles had completely forgotten Braeden was in the room.  When he turned to look, the world blurred, anxiety clawing at his vision.

“Hey, hey, Stiles,” Derek said.  A hand settled over his heart and Stiles was shocked at the memory of the way the Other Derek did the same thing.  “Shit,” Derek cursed when Stiles gasped for air.  “He’s never reacted like this before!”

“Before?” Stiles asked.  His mind was racing so fast it wasn’t making any connections, just flashes of panic stricken half formed thoughts. 

Derek nudged him towards the couch and Stiles’s knees buckled.  He wondered if he was woozy from the trip.  His stomach suddenly felt like someone had scraped it dry.

“Hey, hey,” Derek said, kneeling before Stiles, one hand still on Stiles’s heart.  “It’s okay.  You’re fine.  I just.  You came here, right?  You came back here from somewhere else?”

Stiles swallowed back the sting of his lungs and the dizziness and focused on Derek’s soft blue eyes.  “Yeah,” he whispered, not bothering to think too hard about how Derek knew this, or it might send him off on another tailspin. 

“You had been away, at grad school.  And then you came home, to deal with the house, right?” Derek asked, sounding unsure.  Stiles simply nodded, his brain full of white noise.  “Okay.  Right.  And then you went to a night club, right?  And then woke up… somewhere else.”

“How,” Stiles asked, searching Derek’s eyes for an answer, “how do you know that?”

“Because you’re not the first one to come back.” 

Stiles didn’t know what to say.  He didn’t know what that _meant_.  Come back?  Did that mean this _was_ the right timeline?  When he stayed quiet, Derek sighed and sat back on his heels, still kneeling in front of Stiles.

“You, came here, looking for a book.  Which I let you have.  You came back, a yearish later, and returned in.  A few months after that, you came here, looking for a book.  The same book.  It wasn’t until the third time you borrowed the book did we figure out why it seemed as if you had never read it before.  Now, one of you lost it, but Deaton knows how to send you back after the first time.”

“Send me back?” Stiles asked, not quite following Derek’s story but jumping to wild conclusions regardless. 

Derek looked away, eyes as wide and pleading as the Derek he just left.  “You always find me before you try to go back to wherever you just came from.”

It didn’t make sense.  Stiles had just come from a universe where there were two of him.  A timeline that split off from the moment Scott died instead of turning into a werewolf.  But this, this was his timeline, wasn’t it?  This was the world he left behind, up to the point where the fey bit him in the alley behind the Jungle.  Up to the point where the magic swept him up in its current and, and, and…

“The ley lines didn’t take me to a universe that needed my magic,” Stiles rasped out, vision unfocused as he could finally see the strings of his mental link chart.  Magic knew what it was doing.  It spanned across the multiverse as an invisible force that connected everything.  “It took me to _every_ universe that needed my magic.”

Traveling through the ley lines was a crossroads in itself.

“Yeah, you said something like that before,” Derek muttered.  He stood and walked off.  Stiles didn’t track his motions, too lost in the hypotheticals this prompted.

It was too hard to think about the multiverse.  If every crossroads yielded every possibility then there was the universe he visited and the same one only he didn’t visit it, and it was still dying.  So, what would even be the point.  Unless there was a fix on it.  Magic had a purpose.  Magic _knew_ what it was doing. 

“How many?” Stiles asked eventually, conclusions in his brain half formed.

Maybe those worlds _were_ fixed.  The split happened _in_ the ley lines, after all.  All those universes needed his magic to fix the strain of a dying nemeton. 

“We lost count,” Derek said.  “Upwards of fifty, I think.  Some of you came and went within a week, others stuck around, trying to fit in here before giving in and returning to whatever timeline they had visited.”  He sounded despondent, going through the motions of making a coffee much like Braeden had.  She wasn’t in the kitchen and her bowl of chips was empty. 

“Where did Braeden go?”

“Slipped out while you were panicking,” he sighed, watching the Keurig fill his mug. 

Stiles felt unsettled watching Derek from the couch, but didn’t trust his legs to carry him to the kitchen.  He focused back on his fingers, counting them silently.  Reality was lax in his experience.  Had to make sure. 

“Did two of… of me ever come here at the same time?” Stiles asked, afraid for the answer.

“Not that I know of.  One came back almost as soon as one left.”  Derek didn’t come back from the kitchen even though his coffee had finished brewing.  The tension between them stretched like taffy. 

“You’re sure all of us originated here?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Why would they go back?” Stiles whispered to himself.  He would never risk it, using found magic was dangerous enough but to recreate the double walker situation?  Unless, they didn’t have a double walker situation.  If all the other universes that needed his magic needed it because.  Because there wasn’t one of him at all.

“What did you say?” Derek asked, coming back into the living room.  It was clear from his stricken expression and sharp tone, he had heard the whisper as clear as any other part of their conversation. 

If it were safe to do so, if OS wasn’t there, would Stiles want to go back as well?  There wasn’t anything for him here, after all.  There he had his dad, at least.  Even the pack was starting to like him.  He supposed there were prospects of that life he would enjoy. 

Stiles looked up to Derek – the Derek he had been through everything with – and knew the answer.

They all went back because they were all in love.  With someone who loved them back.

Stiles blinked away a sudden swell of tears.  “Uh, it’s nothing.  I don’t.  Um.  What’s today’s date?”

“Did you only just travel here?” Derek asked.

Stiles nodded. 

“Should be the same day you left.”

“It’s not.”  That gave Derek pause.  “It was still summer when I left.  And you said the first one back had been here for a year?  I hadn’t been over there for more than a few months.”

The taffy like silence pulled between them, suffocatingly thick and heavy.  “It’s November first,” Derek said.  “2027.”

Stiles clamped a hand over his mouth.  Maybe they had done.  Maybe it all came together, the other timelines, the splits of himself in the ley lines, the double walker sacrifice.  Thanks to the channeling Lydia had managed when he and OS dumped their magic into the nemeton, Stiles had all the stolen life transferred to him.  OS would get to live until his end, without a new tragic accident cutting it short.  Stiles would carry the burden of being a doppelgänger alone, cursing himself to die even earlier than had they not done the transfer upon his departure.

Only.

Only, the ley lines took from the middle of his life, hadn’t it.  “Seven years,” Stiles whispered.  Seven years were missing.  Maybe it was enough time for all other variations of his traveling self had come and gone.  Maybe, if for once in his stupid life he was _actually lucky_ , there wasn’t a risk of him becoming a doppelgänger again.  Maybe, just maybe, this meant he would be free to live out the rest of his years without fear of his untimely demise.

Stiles had always thought those “I almost died and now I have a new outlook on life” stories were bullshit.  Stiles had almost died plenty of times and the only new outlook he had was a cynical spiral of cursing the world around him.  He started laughing, bubbles bursting inside his chest like champagne fizzes.  

He’d have to find Lydia again.  She’d be able to tell him if he were still connected to a death omen. 

Derek was looking at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was.  There was no way to tell anymore.  Stiles laughed until he tasted the salt water dripping onto his tongue.  He wiped away his tears and his laughter settled. 

The silence no longer felt like taffy, although there was still a string of tension between them. 

Stiles cleared his throat and tried to not look like a maniac as he smiled up at Derek.  “Is it cool if I crash here tonight?  I, uh, I’m not going back to that place and I have to figure out what I’m going to do now that I’m back.”

Derek blinked.  His chest heaved with a deep breath and slowly lowered with one long, silent exhale.  He turned away and headed back to the kitchen.  “Yeah, that’s fine.  I’ll make dinner.”

“Oh.  Okay.”  Derek had let him stay, but he was clearly uncomfortable about it.  He listened to the sound of pots and pans and sizzling oil and counted his fingers again.  Then he remembered he had a _life_ in front of him. 

One he didn’t know what to do with.  He thought about it for some time.  Staring out of the windows he could see almost all of Beacon Hills.  The small town lit up for the night like a soothing reminder that people lived there, that they always would.  This town would find a way to thrive even amongst all the monsters that went bump in the night.  Even across universes, it found a way to survive.

OS was a guidance counselor.  Stiles remembered how Morrell always knew what was going on and tried to help him without revealing she was part of the same community.  Stiles didn’t want to be the cryptic advisor.  He wasn’t built to be Morrell or Deaton.  OS was good at his job.  He really liked helping people.  Stiles wasn’t stable enough to be shaping young minds, though. 

But he couldn’t just do nothing with this second chance.

Derek came back and set a plate of spaghetti on the coffee table.  Stiles looked around and noticed the dinning table was covered with blueprints and stacks of papers and books.  There wasn’t a single chair around it, either.  Derek probably always ate at the couch or the kitchen bar.  Derek sat in the chair across from him with his own plate.

“Thanks,” Stiles said, digging in.  He was starving.  He wondered if he looked older than the last time he caught his reflection.  The dirty suit was an aesthetic to throw into the mix.  Derek didn’t look any older than the Other Derek, but those wolf boys aged slowly.  “What are the blueprints for?”  Stiles asked, wanting a topic of conversation that wasn’t the mind fuck of his possible reality.

“Refurbishing a new property,” Derek said, fixing his eyes on the table.  “Idiots keep moving to Beacon Hills.”

Stiles smirked.  He supposed he should have noticed it sooner, in the other timeline, that the town was dying.  Beacon Hills was already riddled with abandoned factories and warehouses.  The nogitsune had being doing a number on the nemeton for decades.  But the town swelled as soon as the nemeton had woken up.  Despite the death count, people kept coming.  The other timeline had been practically deserted comparatively.  

“People are pulled by the magic whether they realize it or not,” Stiles said, twirling more spaghetti onto his fork.  He paused and rested his fork on the plate, loose grip in his hand.  “Why are you still here?”  He looked around the loft.  “Why haven’t you moved by now?  I thought coming back was temporary, until you could fix it up and make some money as landlord.”

It was one of the few things they had talked about in the past.  Derek didn’t want to be in Beacon Hills, and surely it couldn’t be healthy staying in the loft when it was filled with memories of death. 

Derek took his time chewing the mouthful of food he had before answering.  “I didn’t want you to not know where to find me.”  He didn’t look Stiles’s way. 

Stiles was grateful.  He wasn’t sure he could handle the force of Derek’s gaze right now. 

“Oh,” Stiles muttered.  His chest constricted, and he shoved the forkful of pasta into his mouth.  “’hanks.”

They didn’t speak, after that.  A few pleasantries, Derek letting him know where the spare blankets were, an early goodnight.  Whatever was troubling Derek kept him away.  Stiles was too distracted to bring it up.  His grasp on reality was tentative and he didn’t want to push too hard when he wasn’t sure where he stood just yet.

In the bathroom, Stiles was shocked to see himself.  He had aged, although the differences weren’t big.  Seven years.  He was 31 now.  He looked it.  “Jesus Christ.”

But it meant that, he was supposed to live this long and longer.  He gave OS and Other Derek back the three and a half years he had taken from them.  All in all, just being here was a miracle. 

He took a shower and wore his boxers and undershirt for pajamas.  Derek avoided him until he was back downstairs to go to sleep.  The couch was comfortable, but the moonlight shining in through the giant windows kept him up.  Stiles slid from the couch and walked over to the glass.  This late, the light from Beacon Hills was dimmer, only a few street lamps lighting the whole area.  The sky was bright and he could see the stars. 

Stiles wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, watching the night sky.  The stillness helped calm his anxiety and organize the flood of thoughts and theories he had been putting together earlier.

This was it, then.  This was home.

A creak came from behind and Stiles turned to see Derek halfway down the spiral staircase.  Their eyes caught.  Their breath caught.  The chord of tension between them pulled tighter, even ask Derek came closer.

“Every time,” Derek started, a momentum building in his voice just from those two words.  “You came here every time.  You came to find _me_ every time.  And even when I didn’t have a book for you to borrow, you came to me.  You said goodbye.  _Every.  Time_.  But you only went to see Scott _twice_.  Fifty plus variations of you and only two of you visited your best friend,” Derek told him, voice desperate for understanding.  “As soon as you found out an older version of you had already patched things up, you decided to let things lie.  Not a single one of you thought to go see him _first_.  It was always me.  And you always _left_.  And you say you’re not leaving but I don’t know if I can believe that.”

Bathed in moonlight, in day old boxers, and crying.  So, this is how they were going to do this.

The string of tension snapped in an instant.  Stiles rushed towards Derek and like that stupid _Notebook_ movie Lydia always made him watch, grabbed at Derek’s face.  He wasn’t even sure if he jumped, but sure enough Stiles found himself secure and lifted in Derek’s arms and legs wrapped around Derek’s waist.

And they were kissing.  Dear god, they were kissing.  Stiles’s brain couldn’t comprehend anything else.  The heat of Derek’s breath, the scrape of his beard, the way their lips slotted together so eager and tender.  A chill ran down Stiles’s spine as they parted, panting heavily and still in Derek’s arms.  He traced the pads of his thumbs under Derek’s eyes, marveling at what it was like to actually touch him, to finally see those eyes look at him the way he always wanted.

“They all left for the same reason I was always planning to stay,” Stiles told him once he got his voice back.  He leaned down and kissed Derek again.  Softly this time, and just once.  “I don’t know if there’s a universe out there where I don’t love you.”

Derek surged into the kiss.  It was sometime later that they finally settled into stillness, twisted in Derek’s bedsheets and wrapped up in each other.  Stiles brushed an errant strand of hair out of Derek’s eyes.  Derek took his hand and kissed his knuckles. 

“Let’s go on a date,” Stiles said.  “We should date.  Fuck, I need a job.  I don’t have enough money to take you on a date.”

Derek chuckled.  “I think I can cover it.”

“Also, this may be taking things fast, but I found myself in my thirties very suddenly and I think we should move in together.  Somewhere new.  A place that’s _ours_ because you really shouldn’t be staying in this place.  And also, we’re probably the closest thing to soulmates that exists and –”

Derek kissed the words off his lips.  “I spent a long time with one of you, figuring out what had happened, why different versions of you kept returning here.  It was when the next one showed up that Braeden broke up with me.  She’s been convinced we were destined for each other for years.”

“Is that a yes?” Stiles asked, hopeful for this to be his life, his future, his reality.

“Yes,” Derek said.  “I think I can manage living with you as you try to find a job.”

“What do you think I would be good at?” Stiles asked, flopping onto his back. 

Derek rolled over so that he could look at Stiles’s face better.  “You’re kidding, right?”

Stiles frowned.  He had never put thought into his future.  Just get through school.  Just get through dad’s death.  Just make money for rent.  Just use what you had at disposal.  Just get drunk.  He never knew what he wanted.

“Stiles, you’re the best detective I’ve ever met.  And working with Braeden, I’ve met quite a few.”  Derek leaned down and kissed Stiles again.  “You’d be fantastic.  Solving puzzles.  Helping others.”

“While you’re a landlord?” Stiles grinned. 

Derek shrugged.  “I just want to have some peace.”

“I could use some peace,” Stiles said, rolling back into Derek’s chest.

Derek wrapped his arm around Stiles’s waist.  “You have time to figure things out.”  Another kiss landed on Stiles’s forehead.  “Let’s just start with that date.”

.

.

.

Lydia cackled over her fourth glass of wine.  “Oh my god, that’s _priceless_.  How am I only learning about this now?”

Stiles sipped his beer with a grin.  They rocked back and forth on the swing bench that looked over the lake.  Lydia had bought back her grandmother’s place while Stiles was in limbo.  She still worked for NASA, but had launched her own field research out in the desert, about two hours drives away.  She came back on the weekends.  Stiles was glad they were able to reconnect after all this time.  Lydia hadn’t met any of his split realities, so at least the last time they saw each other had been the same.  He had told her everything because he needed to know about the death omen, still.

It seemed like, against all reason, it had really worked.  This was home.  The life that had been taken from him was those lost seven years.  She was even pretty confident that OS was also alive and well.  Stiles didn’t pry into how she knew, but this version of Lydia was a lot more powerful than the one who didn’t learn she was a banshee until she was twenty-four. 

Coming back to Scott and his pack had been more awkward.  Scott hadn’t seen him in six years, though, so it was still a reunion, and all had been forgiven.  They finally felt like adults, even Malia was able to be around him like friends who had lost touch rather than the hot mess all previous interactions had been.  Stiles silently thanked his first split for patching that up.

“Well you clearly haven’t talked to Braeden.  It’s her favorite story.”  She come over the day after Stiles returned to this timeline, only to find him and Derek in a compromising position.  Derek would never live down all of Braeden’s gloating of _I told you so,_ and _that didn’t take long_.  She sounded more like a sister than an ex and honestly Stiles was just glad Derek had at least one relationship before him that hadn’t ended in tragedy.  “Making out in the living room and all of a sudden there’s a bounty hunter at the door screaming like a Belieber.”

Lydia let her giggles die down before taking another sip of her wine.  “Did you notice Isaac and Malia sniffing around each other earlier?” she asked.

Stiles snorted.  “Big time.”  It had been subtle in the other line, but she had latched onto Isaac much like this Malia had once latched onto Stiles.  The other line was still fresh and fairly innocent when Stiles knew them.  Mostly just Isaac helping her with the homework Boyd assigned and bringing her to her dad’s and watching Disney movies, but the affection was clear.  It was easy to forget that this Isaac and this Malia hadn’t gotten a chance to know each other before Isaac left town.

Lydia had invited all the old pack members to her birthday party.  A blow out to outdo anything she had hosted in high school.  With no werewolf resurrections or drugged punch. 

They hadn’t expected such a high attendance, them all being adults and so scattered, but everyone who had survived to their thirties showed up. Cora and Malia were inside trading stories of all the things they’ve killed over the years. Liam and Hayden left to pay their baby sitter, and Mason left with them. Jordan had patrol to get to.  Scott and Isaac had challenged each other to a race and hadn’t returned yet. Danny got to catch up with Jackson and Ethan.  Apparently the two werewolves used to date and hadn't seen each other since Ethan joined Scott’s pack.  The serendipity of their relationship was more mind boggling than Stiles being a creature of parallel universes.

“I miss Allison,” Lydia whispered.

Stiles grabbed her hand and squeezed.  “All our friends who couldn’t make it here tonight, are out there somewhere living the life they were always meant to,” he assured her.  “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

Lydia smiled at him and squeezed back before looking at the lake again. “I still miss her.”

“Yeah.  I do, too.” 

Stiles could at least cherish his memories of the Allison worked at a museum and found how she could use her love of art for her career.  He regretted not searching for Kira while he was there, to see her again.  Although, she wasn’t really gone to them.  It had been Kira’s choice to stay with the skin walkers, after all.  She would return to them when she was ready.

The porch door slid open and the noise from inside reached them.  Whatever they were talking about had Cora and Danny in stitches, by the sounds of it.  Scott’s voice traveled out, too, so the race must be over.

Stiles tilted his head back to see Derek in the doorway.  He smiled.  “Hey.”

Derek came behind them and kissed Stiles’s forehead.  His beard had gotten bushier and it tickled.  “Hey.”

Lydia laughed to herself and pushed out of the swing bench.  “Well I’ll leave you two to it,” she simpered before passing Derek and heading inside.  The sounds cut off as Lydia shut the door behind her.  He watched Lydia rejoin the group inside as Derek took her place on the swing bench. 

“God, I hate it when she does that, acting like she can read everybody’s mind,” he snorted.  He didn’t really hate it, but sometimes she acted so superior because she could read every situation better than the rest.  “Sorry not all of us had a hole drilled into our skull by a psychopath and can’t keep up with your supernatural brain speed.”

Derek chuckled.  “I don’t know, she might have been like that even without the banshee powers.”

“Fair,” Stiles agreed. “You about ready to call it a night?” They had about a forty minute drive ahead of them, having moved out of town.  It was close enough to still manage Derek’s properties and Stiles was able to set up a P.I. practice nearer the city. 

Derek stayed silent, taking Stiles’s hand and tracing the lines of his palms and the veins that stuck out and the moles.  “You once asked me.  Not you.  A different you.  God, I that will never not be annoying,” Derek huffed. 

Stiles laughed.  “Imagine what it was like for me when there was a _second Stiles_ right there!”

Derek hummed, still searching for his words.  “The first one of you to come back and look for that book, he asked me about my relationship with Braeden.  I think he wanted to assure himself that I was going to be happy without him there, even though we hadn’t really seen each other in a long time.”

Stiles nodded.  “Sounds like me.”

Derek kissed the back of Stiles’s hand.  “You asked if I was going to marry her,” he laughed like even the memory was incredulous.  “I think I said I wasn’t the marrying type.”

When Derek caught Stiles’s eye, the look he had was striking.  Stiles wasn’t sure if he was breathing anymore.

“I was wrong,” Derek said. 

“Derek Hale,” Stiles started, biting at the inside of his lip to keep his emotions in check.  “If this is a fucking proposal there better be a ring, one knee, and a speech declaring your undying love for me that doesn’t include your ex-girlfriend.”

Derek dropped Stiles’s hand as he stood up.  Stiles tracked Derek’s every movement as his boyfriend reached into his pocket and got on one knee.

“Oh my god,” Stiles hissed, unable to breath enough to get out a proper scolding.  “You jerk.”

Derek held up the gold band in his fingers, having forgone a box.  “Since I can remember there’s been a pull between us.  Even when we hated each other, you were still the person I found when I was hurt, or evading the police.”  Derek smirked when Stiles let out a hysterical bark of laughter.  “To find out that the universe rearranged itself to make sure that every version of me could have a version of you?  It didn’t take a genius to realize, marrying type or not, I’d make sure to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“You’re not even going to ask the question, are you?”

Derek took Stiles’s hand again and slipped the gold band onto his finger.  “Marry me.”

“I’m going to marry the fuck out of you,” Stiles cried.  “We’re going to be domestic as shit.  Come here, you asshole.”

Stiles pulled Derek towards him, their mouths slotting together like second nature at this point.  Derek brushed away the tears that slid down Stiles’s cheek. 

“Well come on now, you two,” Lydia called from the doorway.  “Don’t have sex on my porch.  Get inside and I’ll pull out the champagne.”

They stayed outside a moment longer, gazing into each other’s eyes.  Stiles had never thought he would ever be able to have this.  Friends.  Family.  It wasn’t like OS’s pack.  It wasn’t hearth and home to one solid group of people.  But they found a way to be together regardless. 

“I love you,” Stiles whispered.

“Forever,” Derek promised.

“Forever.”

.

.

.

Stiles wheeled out onto the porch to wait for the rest of the pack to return from their run.  The full moon lit up the back yard, a sight he never got tired of.  Lydia and Allison joined him.  He was glad to have been able to befriend her after Nik left, and that she and Allison got over their grudges. 

“Do you think he’s doing okay?” Stiles asked, still starring at the moon. 

“Nik?” Lydia asked, following his line of sight.  “Something tells me he’s doing just fine.”

A rustle was heard just then.  When Stiles looked to the tree line, Derek stepped out, first of the pack to return home. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> that's all she wrote
> 
> or... is it?
> 
> The third part of this story "A Million Fraying Threads" is an afterword to touch more upon head canons that didn't make it into the fics and deeper understandings of my structure of parallel universes for anyone interested in how my mind works
> 
> But there's also possibly going to be an actual 3rd part to this story. [Check out here to learn more about the final installment of this series and how you can read it.](https://www.patreon.com/posts/20947409) It won't be making its way to AO3 for some time. 
> 
>  
> 
> \------------
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
>  
> 
> [FIND ME ON TUMBLR](http://www.inthearmsofathief.tumblr.com)
> 
>    
> Also! I'm made a webseries about werewolves! [The Werewolf Diaries](http://www.youtube.com/c/amyberserk)


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